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By Justin Smith

Reel Reviews

Sequels are fickle things. Some of them turn out to be better than the original film ("The Empire Strikes Back" comes to mind), but most are made simply to capitalize on the success of the first. Unfortunately, "Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows" falls into the latter category, and it’s painfully obvious.

"Blair Witch 2" begins by showing the aftermath of the highest grossing independent film of all time, "The Blair Witch Project". Television clips and interviews with residents of Burkittsville, Maryland (fictional town of the alleged Blair Witch) do well to set up the movie and gave me the false impression that this film would be more than a mandatory moneymaking sequel. Sadly, I was very wrong.

The five main extremely clichéd characters are soon introduced and the jumbled story begins. Following in the "Blair Witch" tradition, all the characters retain their real names. First introduced by a gratuitous scene of a doctor pouring what appears to be grease down his nasal cavity, Jeff (Jeffrey Donovan) is the ex-mental patient who starts a tour company to exploit the success of "The Blair Witch Project".

Taking his tour are Tristen (Tristen Skyler) and Stephen (Stephen Barker Turner), the couple researching their Blair Witch-related book, Goth girl Kim (Kim Director), who is conveniently psychic when needed, and Erica (Erica Leerhsen) as the sexy Wiccan.

The five characters then go into the "Blair Witch" woods to camp, but soon run into problems. After setting up cameras around the campsite, they party all night to wake up to find their camera equipment smashed and their tapes missing.

Amazingly, the tapes are soon found, and they head back to Jeff’s creepy, ex-factory loft to watch and figure out just what happened.

While at the loft, strange things begin to happen as the group rushes to figure out the mystery of the tapes. The rest of the plot is predictable, implausible, and dull, with a few clichés thrown in for good measure.

A sequel to "The Blair Witch Project" should not have been made, or at least should not have been made the way it was. The thing that made the original absolutely frightening was its feeling of reality. Filmed on a grainy, black-and-white camera, the audience had a feeling of being there. "Book of Shadows" (which contains no book of shadows) retains none of that real feeling.

I would not recommend "Blair Witch 2" to anyone, especially fans of the first. The actors (and I use this word loosely) are terrible, the script is laughable, and the film is just not scary.