At the end of the Blair Witch Project I was so scared and that feeling probably lies at No.3 in my Top 5 of scared moments, just behind being attacked by a Scorpion and watching The Exorcist (an even scarier movie). I was in a packed cinema, 600-700 people, and I was terrified from start to finish. Now many have said ‘well all it was, was a stupid woman running around screaming from something you couldn’t see’, yes and that’s what frightened me, you couldn’t see what they were running from, it was left to your imagination and boy do I have an imagination. That movie has sent shivers down my spine ever since, even discussing it, and indeed writing this review makes me uneasy. However the sequel doesn’t because, to put it bluntly, it’s crap.

Set one year after the mysterious events that happened in the creepy Burkitsville woods, where the legendary Blair Witch is supposed to reside, Book of Shadows focuses on the aftermath. Much like the hysteria that was evoked by the first movie, the film picks up upon the hordes of people who were absolutely besotted with the film/real-life documentary. The movie’s obsessives have descended upon the town of Burkittsville (actually a fictional place, but after the first movie many visited the town where it was filmed) and creepy souvenirs are being sold everywhere, as are trips into the woods. So the film follows a group of ‘witch-mad’ Generation-X’ers all in there late teens and early twenties as they spend a night in the woods and lose 5 hours of their night, which leads to a series of horrifying events.

However the events aren’t terrifying at all, there pretty lame to be honest, which is such a disappointment. I would even go as far as saying that this sequel tarnishes the mystique of the first film. When you have a psychological horror movie, all the ‘scares’ are in the mind, you don’t really see the evil that is preying upon you. However once you see something, that unnerving edge is removed, nothing is left to the imagination and that is why the movie is so poor, it destroys the horrors of the first film, which still lurk in your mind.

The film really seemed like an incredibly over the top promo video for Korn or Marilyn Manson and had no style in it's direction what-so-ever. Add to that incredibly poor acting, out-dated haunted house special effects, a ‘Scream-wannabe’ script, a nonsensical plot and an ending so bad it could have been written by someone who’s at primary school, all contribute to this being an absolute stinker of a movie.

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