fangoria_magazine

BOOK OF SHADOWS doesn't fail for lack of ambition. The idea, as

most anyone who has taken an interest in the sequel knows by

now, was not to follow up the first film's events but treat that

movie as a movie, and explore its effects on a group of

devotees. To wit, five young people with varying degrees of

interest in BLAIR WITCH and its mythology camp out near what is

supposedly the remains of the Rustin Parr house. They black out

for part of the night, awakening the next morning to find their

equipment trashed; they then repair to the converted warehouse

one owns, where they start scanning through a bunch of

videotapes they've shot for clues. Strange things appear on the

video images, and soon before the characters' eyes, and paranoia

begins to seize the group. The questions soon become: Has a

witchy presence followed them back, or has their own Blair

Witch-mania taken over their psyches? And how much of what we

the audience are watching can we trust as real? Intriguing questions, but their effect is undercut by a number

of factors. For one, the characters, as both written and

performed, don't engender sufficient sympathy to get us caught

up in their plight. Secondly, in a major miscalculation, the

film is littered with flash-forwards to a redneck sheriff

(overacted by Lanny Flaherty) interrogating the survivors, which

not only lets us know who makes it through the night but also

too clearly signposts the story's resolution. And despite his

provocative overall theme, Berlinger stumbles with the horrific

details, reaching into a grab bag of stock terror tropes like

evil kids, shock cuts of graphic gore and flashbacks to the

group's leader (Jeffrey Donovan) thrashing a

I tried to give this movie a chance, I really did, because the

movie's concept did have possibilities. Unfortunately, director

Graham (THE FINAL CONFLICT) Baker has as much skill in creating

suspense and terror as Lambert does in speaking intelligible

English. In addition, the complexities that are needed to make Beowulf

into an interesting antihero are beyond the actor's limited

acting range, which renders the secret reasons why Beowulf

really showed up at the castle ultimately ineffective. Also, the

film seems to have been cut in places (no surprise from

scissor-happy Dimension); it is often inappropriately paced or

appears to be missing a linking scene or two. But that may be a

blessing in disguise, as I'm not really looking forward to a

possible DVD Director's Cut with 20 minutes of extra footage.

So once again Lambert has let me down, but I will not lambast

him too harshly. He has made worse films than this harmless

mess. And even though the monsters may be silly and CGI-looking,

they at least distract you from Lambert for a while-but

unfortunately, n

SLEEPY HOLLOW HIGH offers further proof that DVD, against the odds, has become the great equalizer; even a homegrown project like this can now receive the deluxe disc treatment. The opportunistically titled film wasn't shot anywhere near Sleepy Hollow (try Maryland), and while it's mostly a generic slasher story (with a copout of an ending), it's a little more ambitious than some in terms of character conflict. The fullscreen transfer of this 16mm production is good enough, with a crisp if sporadically grainy picture and sharp Dolby Digital mono sound, and is accompanied by a wealth of extras: `The Curse of Sleepy Hollow,' a fitfully amusing spoof of all those BLAIR WITCH offshoots; `Deleted Scenes' (mostly alternate takes and outtakes); a making-of short; a music video that looks like it was thrown together in an afternoon; and spirited commentary by the filmmakers who recall the challenges and ingenuity involved in their low-budget shoot.