• Reviews
    • Watch This
    • VODepths
  • Humor
  • On the Marquee
  • Looking Back
    • Classic Corner
    • Anniversary
  • Film Fests
  • Follow us
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
Crooked Marquee
  • Reviews
    • Watch This
    • VODepths
  • Humor
  • On the Marquee
  • Looking Back
    • Classic Corner
    • Anniversary
  • Film Fests
Home
Looking Back
Happy Birthday

How Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 Predicted Internet-Inspired Crime

Oct 26th, 2020 Sezín Koehler 503
How Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 Predicted Internet-Inspired Crime

A year after the wild and unexpected success of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, audiences snubbed one of the most unfairly maligned sequels in movie history: Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. Instead of following the original’s found-footage format, Book of Shadows’ opening disclaimer notes that the film we are about to see is a dramatization of violent crimes that were inspired by The Blair Witch Project roughly a year after it first came out. The meta is extremely strong with this one, even becoming sub-meta as the reenactment dramatizes elements of the reenactment itself. 

Book of Shadows follows local Burkittsville tour guide Jeff (Jeffrey Donovan) on his inaugural Blair Witch Hunt—a name itself that ends up becoming a double entendre. He leads guests Erica (Erica Leerhsen) the Wiccan, competing Blair Witch historians Tristen (Tristine Skyler) and Stephen (Stephen Ryan Parker), and goth Blair Witch Project enthusiast Kim (Kim Director) on a jaunt into the haunted Black Hills of Maryland. Was it mass hysteria or actual supernatural possession that leads the group to collectively and individually slaughter eight people over the course of just two days? Cobbling together traditional narrative storytelling, found footage elements, and VHS and digital recordings made by characters along the way, Book of Shadows is a masterful mixed-media collage that has aged particularly well in the sometimes harsh light of high-definition TVs. 

Drawing heavily from the many mythologies presented in The Blair Witch Project about the witch herself, the serial killer Rustin Parr, and an unnamed dark entity said to be a force of evil in the woods, Book of Shadows deep dives into the stories while also presenting social commentary that has only gained relevance over the years. In Book of Shadows we see the Blair Witch craze amplified online, bringing fanatics from all over America to this small corner of Maryland. But it’s not until the events of Jeff and his tour group that the online hoaxes promoting the Blair Witch turn deadly. When I heard about the Slenderman Murders, the first thing I thought of was Book of Shadows, where the internet also helped fuel a mythology so convincing that it would lead to real life murder and violence.

But when Book of Shadows came out 20 years ago, we didn’t have so many examples of the kind of group hysteria fueled online that has led to some vicious real-life crimes –  most recently when Kyle Rittenhouse travelled across state borders to kill Black Lives Matter protesters or the plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and her family. QAnon and the Blair Witch, in these contexts, have a lot in common: both are based on fictions that still managed to inspire violence. In QAnon’s case, the violence is very real and very dangerous; in Book of Shadows, the fictional violence serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers of conspiracy-minded thinking and the collective psychosis that can follow. 

Many of Book of Shadows’s critics insisted it was completely unrealistic to think that the internet could inspire this level of brutality and inhumanity. But now the film seems to predict  our current reality in an era of “fake news” rhetoric that has critical thinkers doubting what is real, while others would inject themselves with bleach if a certain person told them it was a cure. Before the violence escalates in Book of Shadows, Tristen says to Stephen, “Stories like this happen because they exist in a place of truth. … Because if people believe something enough, isn’t it real? Perception is reality.” Tristen was talking about the myth of the Blair Witch, but two decades later her theory inadvertently highlights how her own story on screen predicted the proliferation of internet-inspired violence that is now a part of our daily social and cultural reality.

On its twentieth birthday, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is a dire warning of what happens when we blur the line between fiction and reality too far. In 2000 Book of Shadows seemed over the top; in 2020 the harrowing events in the movie actually feel more like a documentary than The Blair Witch Project itself.

  • Tags
  • happy birthday
  • looking back

Share this post:

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest E-mail
Sezín Koehler

Sezín Koehler

Related Posts
Classic Corner: <i>Once Upon a Time in the West</i>
Sean Burns
Looking Back

Classic Corner: Once Upon a Time in the West

May 26th, 2023
<i>Bruce Almighty</i> at 20: Hollywood’s One Spiritual Sensation
Marshall Shaffer
Happy Birthday

Bruce Almighty at 20: Hollywood’s One Spiritual Sensation

May 24th, 2023
The Dark Ocean Endures: <i>Finding Nemo</i> at 20
Will DiGravio
Happy Birthday

The Dark Ocean Endures: Finding Nemo at 20

May 24th, 2023
Peckinpah’s Elegy: <i>Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid</i> at 50
Zach Vasquez
Happy Birthday

Peckinpah’s Elegy: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid at 50

May 22nd, 2023
Classic Corner: <i>Rebel Without a Cause</i>
Jason Bailey
Looking Back

Classic Corner: Rebel Without a Cause

May 19th, 2023
Seijun Suzuki Against the Machine
Craig J. Clark
Looking Back

Seijun Suzuki Against the Machine

May 17th, 2023
Trending
May 31st 9:00 AM
Looking Back

Hideaki Anno’s Vast and Introspective Career

Nov 17th 9:00 AM
Movies

The Strange, Sordid Tale of Charles Bronson Lookalike Robert Bronzi

Aug 1st 4:50 PM
Culture

Personal Reflections on The Great Movie Ride (R.I.P.)

Jan 28th 11:00 AM
Film Fests

We Asked a Guy* Who Really Was an LDS Missionary to Watch the LDS Missionary Documentary The Mission

Apr 12th 9:00 AM
Looking Back

5 Centimeters Per Second Remains Makoto Shinkai’s Finest Film

Aug 22nd 9:00 AM
Looking Back

Take the Detour: Neil Young’s Human Highway at 40

Sep 7th 9:00 AM
Movies

How to Be Someone Else: Transgender Themes in the Work of Charlie Kaufman

Jul 6th 7:58 AM
Looking Back

Harvey’s Hellhole: View From the Top

Aug 25th 9:00 AM
Reviews

Review: Three Thousand Years of Longing

Feb 5th 7:00 AM
Looking Back

The 12 Best Movie Soundtrack Music Videos

Looking for something else?
Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
cmpopcorn_white3.svg
  • Company
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Writers Guidelines
  • Members
    • Login
    • SignUp
    • Forums
telephone icon [email protected]
envelope icon [email protected]

© 2014- Crooked™ Publishing


Privacy Policy
Terms of Service

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}