For the looks of it, at 10 mil, the sequel doesn't have even 10 percent of the first film's creativity. See, the sequel's a commercial venture and more or less, the "mockumentary" techniques have been thrown out the window and been replaced with good-olde' mediocre horror filmmaking--oversexed characters, cheap scares and generic screenwriting. Blair Witch 2 will open in theaters in October and it'll look just like any direct-to-video lame-horror lemming film which have come and gone in the past 20 years. God, it doesn't even sound as good as some of the worse Friday The 13th sequels.

     And who are we to blame for this cachin'! of a movie but ourselves--those who paid time and again to see the original and made it a 100 million dollar blockbuster. The mass psychosis that swept over movie theaters last year had movie critics salivating over a film wich had no cinematic technique, zero acting and not one single special effect in sight (yep, despite some of my early writings, my opinion of the film gets worse everytime I think about it). Unless you count those ohhh-so-scary charms made of twigs that hung from trees like some signs from the devil. Yeah, that reaaalllyy scare the crap out of me. Give me some of those twigs and I'll show the sequel makers a dark place where they can shove them.

     It's the Great Hollywood swindle in effect again. 'Cause if it made enough money the first time, they'll shove it down your throat time and again. Since the first film was such a box-office monster, the sequel will probably steal about $30 mil out of our pockets before it flops. Not that the sequel flopping would matter, 'cause the third film, a f*****g pre-quel of all things ungodly, will probably go into production by the time the sequel has its opening weekend in October. Artisan Entertainment, the little distributing house that could, has pretty much gone the way of the Colossal, empty Hollywood studios in this one and set out to milk out the Blair Witch cow until its tits have been pumped flat like empty toothpaste tubes.

     The fans of the original have kicked the sequel into high gear with sites featuring glossy web-graphics and delivering daily blow-by-blow updates of the unspooling of "The Blair Witch Trilogy"--What The f**k have these people been smoking? It must be good crack 'cause to call a couple of cash-mongering films along with the fluke-hit original a "trilogy" must be the visions of someone high on Dope Street who has involving conversations with dogs. Hey, The Star Wars films are a "trilogy", these Blair Witch films are pathetic, feature-length infomercials.

     As for details of the sequel, nothing truly worth discussing. The film's said to be somewhat scripted, somewhat improvised (and all retarded), with scenes involving the kids going into the woods and getting into some horrifying business such as finding more lost Blair Witch footage in caves and getting scared off by bats..man, I'm quaking in my boots already...and some naked guy covered in white makeup coming at the kids with his tongue cut off....and horror of horrors...that real-life hag Mary Brown from the first film will be naked in the film--now that's puking material there. I heard a few weeks back that the citizens of Burkittsville MD voted the sequel's production out of town; a wise move I say considering the film's highlight will probably shaky shots of half-naked actors running in mock horror thru zero-lit backwoods.

     So here you have it. Horror in the 21st century. Films so dinwitted and derivative that makes me wish the Lumiere Brothers and Edison never messed around with the concept of creating a media of moving images caught on film. As clueless kids across America consume the buffet of mediocrity that will be Blair Witch Project 2, the original's creators, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, will probably be laughing their asses off at some beach in France along with the Devil, with whom they made a deal with to convinced moviegoers that this sequel is the peak of cinematic scary entertainment.