After a brief spat, Stephen's group coyly suggest they saw something sinister at Coffin Rock, which sends the second group scurrying.Īlcohol and pot are consumed in abundance before the five awaken to find the 'Hysteria or History' text fluttering down upon them like snow.
The group set up camp at the ruins of the house where the movie trio met their demise and are immediately overrun by a walking tour group comprised of two young entrepeneurs and their customers, a Chinese couple and a German woman. Goth chick Kim Director professes to be psychic, immediately sensing Tristen's unwanted pregnancy. Tellingly, young couple Tristen Skyler and Stephen Turner are working on a book about "The Blair Witch Project" that asks 'hysteria or history?' (As in "The Blair Witch Project," the characters' names are the same as the actors who play them.) Erica Leerhsen is a Wiccan who wants to commune with the Blair Witch, who she believes was a child of nature, like herself, treated in her time like some unfortunate women of Salem. This is as funny and hip and the original film's premise, although we begin to see MTV style edits of disturbing images of torture and mutilation around the time the opening credits begin to roll over Marilyn Manson's "Disposable Teens." The film's establishing act humorously begins with MTV's Kurt Loder speaking about the phenomenom followed by Roger Ebert's television review before showing hordes of teenagers raiding Burkittsville's cemetary and Black Hills ('Get out of the woods! There's no damn Blair Witch! screams the town sheriff over a megaphone.) One woman recounts how she so successfully sold Blair Witch twig figures on her front lawn that she eventually was persuaded to sell the stones from her rock garden for $10.
It helps to have kept up with all the Sci-Fi channel specials (this one recalls the video/DVD special airing of "The Burkittsville Seven").
While I've heard preview audiences complain that this film is incomprehensible, given thought, it very neatly ties into the legend, while also acknowledging the film as a media event with a wink and an intriguing look at the cause and effect of violence in popular artforms. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, the original Blair Witch creators, step back to executive producer credits for the sequel (they are supposedly writing Blair Witch 3, which will be a prequel) to their smash hit "The Blair Witch Project" and let documentarian Joe Berlinger ("Paradise Lost," "Brother's Keeper") pick up the reins as director and cowriter (with Dick Beebe, 1999's "House on Haunted Hill").įirstly, this film bears no resemblance to its predecessor except for its adherence to the Blair Witch lore, so artfully created and expanded upon on the website.