Grade: D

Verdict: "Boo" goes bust in this ambitious but lame sequel.

Details: Starring a bunch of people you never heard of. Rated R for violence, profanity, sexuality and drug use. One hour, 30 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Strange sounds filled the theater at a preview screening of "Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows."

Not the eerie wailing of spectral children.

Not a spooky cackle from the dark Maryland woods.

No, it was the fwap-thump of chair seats popping up, the footsteps of people heading prematurely for the exit, and ripples of mocking laughter from those who remained to watch this badly judged sequel.

A peculiarly dull and muddy meditation on mass delusion, media and the hype surrounding last summer's no-budget hit, call it "Hex, Lies and Videotape."

You can't totally blame director Joe Berlinger, who co-wrote the script. Or even the no-name actors who shriek and freak their way through the flick. Let's face it, whether you loved or hated the first "Witch," it was an original: a savvy, shrewd fusion of form and content. Equal parts faux documentary, spooky campfire tale and snuff flick, its jittery, hand-held video format was so realistic you can probably still find people who think it was factual.

In its opening credits, "Book of Shadows" (which, by the way, contains no such book) acknowledges that the '99 movie was fictional. Then it informs us that this sequel is a fictional re-enactment of actual events that followed the movie's release last summer. (Got all that?)

We witness the flurry of fans that besieged Burkittsville, Md., to the townsfolks' dismay. We see the sheriff (scenery-chewing Lanny Flaherty) yelling on his megaphone for people to "get out of these woods and go home!" This stuff is amusing, but after a year packed with every kind of "Blair Witch" parody, satirizing the original film and its hype isn't exactly hard. Or new. But it's the movie's high point.

A documentary filmmaker making his feature debut, Berlinger was obviously fascinated with the is-it-fact-or-fake reactions to the first film. "Book" follows four strangers as they take the "inaugural Blair Witch Hunt." They're all fans of the movie, and to some degree assume there's some factual basis to it. In the words of one, "If people believe something enough, isn't it real?" It's a rhetorical question that hangs like a dark thesis over the whole flick.

The tour is led by local Jeff (Jeff Donovan, like the other actors using his actual name in "Blair Witch" tradition). The others are:

Erica Leerhsen, a curvy Wiccan who chirpily explains that witchcraft is about nature love, not evil.

Kim Director, a chalk-faced Goth girl who displays psychic tendencies.

And Stephen Barker Turner and Tristen Skyler, a couple writing a book about the "Blair" hype.

Jeff takes the group hiking to the deep-woods ruins of Rustin Parr's house, where the fictional serial killer's child victims were discovered, according to lore. At this outdoor site, wired with multiple video cameras, the folks get drunk, get high, get blotto. And the next morning, wake up with no memory of what happened the previous five hours.

So far so good. But when "BW2" isolates the five people in Jeff's sprawling, trendy loft to study the videotapes and piece together what happened, the movie gets shrill and tiresome. It's hard to care what happens, since the characters are unlikable. Yes, so were the threesome in the first "Blair Witch," but Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams didn't look like actors. The "Book" cast members look exactly like the sort of people to show up in a direct-to-video movie or the next "Urban Legends" sequel (God forbid).

Detailing the aftermath of the ritualistic slaying of three 8-year-old Arkansas boys, Berlinger's 1996 documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" is a lot scarier than anything in "BW2." Exposed to brutal acts and people of questionable sanity, Berlinger brings some facets of his documentary work into the psychology of his "Blair Witch" characters. But it doesn't really work. Neither do the movie's occasional special effects, like glimpses of ghostly kids and a phantom girl walking like a herky-jerky puppet.

You can appreciate Berlinger's decision not to mimic what made the first film indelible. But his movie is an uneasy, postmodern blend of haunted-house thriller and psychological study. Worst of all, it isn't scary.

So skip the movie. Enjoy the Web site. Like the first "Witch," it gets your imagination running in ways the sequel can't.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service