Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) Review

Evil Doesn't Die.

People love to hate on Book of Shadows. It has a dismal 14% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 4/10 on IMDb. Critics complain that it doesn't stand up against the original Blair Witch Project . "Lacking the edgy claustrophobia of the first film" says William Thomas of Empire. "Instead of creating a sequel to The Blair Witch Project, Joe Berlinger brings to the big screen a clumsy 'documentary' about what happened afterward." says Steven Isaac of Plugged in. "Crappy sequel to the hugely successful low-budget Blair Witch Project" says utgard14 on IMDb.

These people don't know what they're talking about.

These are the guys who want sequels to be just as mind blowing as the originals they follow. They compare every detail to the original concepts. They expect to be just as shocked by a sequel that can only expand on what was previously shocking. They went into Book of Shadows hoping it was going to be another Blair Witch Project, another mind-blowingly original genre defining film. Sure, good luck with that.

What Book of Shadows actually delivered was a incredibly entertaining and scary sequel that could easily stand on its own. It took the lore of the original and expanded on it by showing the effects that lore had on fans worldwide. It also confirmed the lore of the Blair Witch in no uncertain terms. It had a strong story, great cast, suspense, skepticism, horror, comic relief, psychedelic reality bending scenes and a clever twist ending. What more could you want from a sequel?

I personally really liked The Blair Witch Project, despite what other fellow reviewers had to say . It was one of the scarier movies I had seen back in '99. But honestly, I have to say I like Book of Shadows more. It gives you all the supernatural awesomeness that the Blair Witch Project did, but without the shaky cam and incessant screaming.

How the new Blair Witch from 2016 got double the Rotten Tomatoes score is beyond me. It's just more of the same shaky cam and screaming. Book of Shadows takes what the Blair Witch Project created and expands on it in a severely underrated horror that gives you everything a horror fan could want.

Some of the special effects might not have aged well, but that's literally the only fault I could find in this movie that I've already seen 3 times and will be seeing again before long.

Worth Watching?