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Was "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2" good, actually? [1]
['Rob Beschizza']
Date: 2023-10-30
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was not well-received, and its debutante director, Joe Berlinger, thought it had ended him at the outset of his career. It didn't—the movie turned a handy profit, critics be damned—and now, 23 years later, he's ready to talk about what went wrong.
On Oct. 30, Berlinger will hold court at the Nitehawk Cinema Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, for a group of patrons ready to give the movie a second shot. Like so many of the oddities bursting out of Hollywood's 2000s churn, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 has been reclaimed by the horror community as "actually good" — or at least inspired. Berlinger says he agreed to the screening, in spite of the film's potential for triggering painful memories, because he gets what the pro-Book of Shadows contingent sees in it.
I'm a believer that subtractive remixing (as opposed to the usual "additive" director's cut) is the way to find the best in mangled movies. I have an outstanding sketch of a 100-minute cut of Alien 3, and I think I could even make Exorcist II: The Heretic cool, if not good. Book of Shadows seems an excellent candidate, ruined as it was with dumb, studio-mandated gore. The meta of the rest of it is tastier, now, like a well-aged cheese.
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