10 Terrible Horror Movies (You Couldn't Stop Thinking About)
8. Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows
Though there has been a half-baked attempt to "reclaim" Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in recent years, to most it's still a puzzling follow-up to one of the most shocking successes the horror genre has ever seen.
It's simply maddening that, in the wake of The Blair Witch Project's critical and commercial success, the decision was made to wholly abandon its found footage style and overall storytelling formula.
Book of Shadows is instead presented in a traditional cinematic style, while also being a metafictional sequel following characters who are obsessive fans of The Blair Witch Project itself.
Veteran filmmaker Joe Berlinger certainly gets points for boldness here, but Book of Shadows is a woefully inferior sequel that suffers from unlikeable characters, stiff performances, laughable dialogue, and jarring soundtrack comprised primarily of nu-metal and alt-rock.
It is at least such a peculiar mess of tones and ideas as to be somewhat interesting, even if almost none of the creative choices here work either in isolation or together.
We could've got a Blair Witch 2 that simply aped the formula of its predecessor, but instead got something that was at once considerably worse and yet a much weirder, more memorable swing.