1. The body count is bigger
2. The death scenes are more elaborate

(Jamie Kennedy's Randy broaches a third, only to be interrupted by David Arquette's Dewey.) Indeed, the corpses pile up in BW2, and its death scenes are more elaborate than 'BW1''s (by virtue of happening, for the most part, on screen). But while The Blair Witch Project left a lot to the imagination, its continuation leaves much to interpretation, and therefore comes across as non-committal. Following a night of binge-drinking in the Black Hills of Burkittsville, Maryland, four fans of The Blair Witch Project (and/or its phenomenal aftermath) and their certifiable tour guide awaken with group amnesia to a vandalized campsite. Videotapes are the sole, patchy evidence of what went down after the moon came up, i.e. murder and (nude) dancing.

The first picture was of simple, nightmarish thrills that Book of Shadows prefers to comment on rather than top--its scares are hooked on the hype surrounding the fictitious original, so that the mass hysteria BW1 supposedly caused (I don't recall any "War of the Worlds"-type panic in the streets) returns in the form of mistrust between the tourists; Berlinger, one half a gifted documentarian (he co-directed the acclaimed Paradise Lost films with Bruce Sinofsky), should've opted to write a FILM COMMENT piece instead.

Almost worse than Berlinger's exercises in intellectual terror (the characters halt to contemplate every last boo; we ourselves would miss the majority of them if not for the home video release's accompanying tutorial), however, is his desire, expressed in both said liner notes and on the disc's commentary track, to apologize for The Blair Witch Project's demonization of Wicca. (What's next, editing Margaret Hamilton out of The Wizard of Oz?) Perhaps Berlinger doesn't see the irony: his BW2, in condemning media-obsessed youth and the dangers of, gasp, alcohol, is equally guilty of Salemic Puritanism. Oh, but for Randy's final rule; Book of Shadows is lost without it.

Artisan Entertainment's Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 DVD has more going for it than the movie itself. In addition to Berlinger's (pronounced "ber-linje-r") coloured yet unreserved commentary (no creative difference goes unturned), the disc features a couple of progressive (although controversial) bonuses. First and foremost in my book is the DVD's status as the debut DVD+CD--side 'B' offers the soundtrack on the compact disc format, and it's operable in all players except car decks. Carter Burwell's score makes a full appearance on this side (along with four noxious hard rock cuts--why is metal considered scary?), while the composer himself contributes informative comments to three key scenes on the DVD side. (Though I normally admire--and often adore--Burwell's stuff, his BW2 music is overly reminiscent of Charles Bernstein's noodlings for A Nightmare on Elm Street.)

"The Secret of Esrever" is a short intended for backward viewing, as that will spell out the clues required to find spooky, subliminal images within Book of Shadows. Unfortunately, my DVD player kept skipping past letters when in esrever mode. The remedy, of course, was to watch forwards in real time taking notes, and then re-read the results back-to-front. But by that point, I had expended almost as much effort decoding the words alone as Artisan and co. did planting them, never mind locating the hidden effects. Nice effort, failed gimmick.

As for BW2's audio/video presentation, the clean, 1.85:1, 16x9-enhanced transfer is a tiny bit too orange, and it can look digitally compressed at times. The 5.1 Dolby Digital audio is tremendous, however, with brilliantly bassy creaks and moans (one advantage to the central location, a decrepit factory) and effectively dizzying directionality (esp. during the homicidal flash-cut transitions). Closing extras: a "live" performance by Godhead (blecch) tied into a label's promo clip, cast-and-crew bios/production notes, DVD-ROM links to outtakes and web-exclusive footage, and a pair of booklets, one containing Berlinger's essay, the other a catalogue for Blair Witch paraphernalia (who's kidding whom?).-Bill Chambers