Our Review
Wow, I was flicking over some of the critics reviews of Book of Shadows and witnessed comment after comment slagging the movie off – pay no attention! If these reviews show anything it is how shallow most of the people who review movies are.
On face value Book of Shadows is admittedly not the greatest horror movie – with a big of physiological scaring, there is nothing much in it to get the audience screaming. I am sure this is why the movie got disappointing reviews. But it doesn’t take too much digging to reveal a superb movie underneath.
Directed by Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, Brothers Keep) the film acknowledges the first movie as a movie – opening with TV reports and interviews with local Burkittsville residents and the impact the movie has had on the town. This offers an opener to the plot life – Jeff, local resident who is running Blair Witch tours. He is soon joined by Stephen and Tristan, Kim and Erica, all fascinated with the Blair Witch for their own reasons.
After they head up into the woods they black out and things take a turn for the worst. Wanting to know what happened they head back to Jeff’s house and begin going through the tapes to recover the missing hours. It might not sound much but I don’t exactly have the best talents for description.
The movie is less of a classic horror movie and more of a deep social commentary movie. Do we to readily accept what we see on video as real? After all that is what the first movie was really about, being sold to us as a documentary.
Although I believe that acting comes down to person taste and how willing you are to allow yourself to slide into the fantasy of the movie, I was quite impressed, they got the job done and made me believe. Although I would say I was still aware I was watching a movie, subtle lighting and camera changes added to the effect of the movie.
Perhaps fans of the first film will be disappointed but if you liked the first one because it was creative and different you will no less like this one. It’s daring, it does knew things, although this can occasionally sacrifice the essential genre conventions. Book of Shadows is not a scary horror movie – it is so, so much more.
Chris Worfolk
In a Nutshell
"Book of Shadows is not a scary horror movie – it is so, so much more"
Rating
Movie was rated 91 out of 100
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