Da Hip Hop Witch

Da Hip Hop Witch

Combining two of the most shamelessly opportunistic trends of the past few years, Da Hip Hop Witch offers a rapsploitation take on The Blair Witch Project, the horror verité blockbuster that now rivals Star Wars as the most spoofed movie of all time. Using The Blair Witch Project's ultra-low-budget documentary framework as an excuse to abandon any pretense of professionalism, Da Hip Hop Witch stars writer-director Dale Resteghini as one of five white suburban kids who set out to find the beast responsible for a series of attacks on rappers. Stacie Jae Johnson co-stars as an aspiring reporter who investigates the attacks, hoping to use the story as a springboard for a career as a journalist. But the meat of Da Hip Hop Witch, and its primary selling point, is a series of cameos from rappers, including Eminem, who later sensibly requested his scenes be deleted. Like many rapsploitation efforts, Da Hip Hop Witch reverts to a sort of pre-narrative spectacle paradigm, in which plot and characterization are secondary to the thrill of actually seeing videotaped images of real-life hip-hop stars. Similarly, its loose, improvisational quality seems attributable less to any sort of aesthetic sensibility than to sheer laziness, the recourse of filmmakers unwilling or unable to write an actual script. An ineptly filmed, atrociously acted nadir for both Blair Witch spoofs and rapsploitation—two mini-movements that weren't exactly pumping out great art to begin with—Da Hip Hop Witch ends with the words "To Be Continued," a threat far scarier than anything in the film itself.

 
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