10 Double Movie Features From Hell

Last year, director Joe Berlinger released Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes on Netflix, a four-part documentary with unreleased audio tapes of the serial killer on death row. He released a companion narrative, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile with Zac Effron as the eerily charismatic madman. Both films were well-received, the second being a bit of a surprise: it was Joe Berlinger's first narrative feature since Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.

Berlinger came onto Book of Shadows with a wealth of ideas. Coming from the documentary scene, he sought to blend fiction and reality the same way the first film's marketing did, only he would blend the film's story with the fanfiction that had grown around the Blair Witch.

The studio wasn't having it and insisted on a more straightforward scarefest. The result is one of the strangest misfires in studio history. Artisan had brought on a visionary director to move Blair Witch in a new direction that would complement the original but also standalone, then effectively neutered him.

Berlinger is noticeably bitter on the commentary, to the point where you wonder why they even let him record a track, but even without it the film is a bizarre exploration of studio interference gone awry.

Around the same time, Wes Craven was revitalizing mainstream horror with Scream and Kevin Williamson, but they had hit their own snag in development. Cursed was stalled and reshot over five years, another example of studios messing where they don't belong.