I’m a self-confessed hardcore horror addict, and I really liked the original movie which came onto the screens with a lot of mixed reviews, but managed to keep me thrilled. I wasn’t surprised there would be a sequel and wasn’t expecting much but got more than I bargained for. There’s barely any stars in the movie which makes it more believable when the characters die in their awfully gruesome deaths and there’s plenty of gruesome deaths to go around. From a ladder through the eyes, to being crushed by glass, to being spliced by a wire fence, there’s a lot of gory painful deaths shown in this movie, and the director doesn’t hold back.
As where the first one was gory but more subdued, this one goes all out. Beware those with the faint of heart or weak stomachs, this is a gag inducer often showing body parts and cut off heads without ever pulling away. I was in awe wondering how the MPAA ever let the producers get away with this one. As always, death is a sinister presence, and thankfully, the director doesn’t show death itself and ruin the movie but we do get close to seeing it by peeking at a silhouette of its creepy skull hands in a window. Ooh! A lot of the characters are set up to die horribly and I enjoyed waiting for the next death and watching it unfold before my eyes, guessing which one would get the axe… literally. It was a lot of fun. There’s not just awesome gore, there’s also a very cool and sometimes confusing plot within the movie that unfolds and creates these incredible plot twists towards the climax of the film that will leave you gasping aloud.
What amazed me was that the director and screenwriters follow up from the first film! We get to find out what happened to the last three survivors from the first (I ain’t telling), and the storyline here basically plays by the storyline from the first one pretty much depending on the plane tragedy that started this whole mess. Tony Todd makes another appearance as the creepy Looney mortician that acts as a guide and somewhat heckler for the kids telling them, “you can’t beat death.” I didn’t realize it until I heard the commentary from the director and writers but It left me thinking: Is Tony Todd’s character a human manifestation of death? Or is he simply a messenger from death there only to taunt the kids wickedly? That is an excellent riddle the filmmakers never solved but it made for some great debating.
The DVD features a lot of great extras including deleted and alternate scenes, a creepy card game predicting how you’ll die, and a funny cheesy documentary testing the fear levels on people who watched this movie. This follows the storyline from the first one and depends on it for plot twists but doesn’t include the exact atmosphere and paranoia the first one gave audiences. The original had me paranoid like a wimp looking around nervously as where this simply doesn’t use the device. The gore is cool but after a while becomes pretty boring and loses all of its effect on you. There’s so much gore and violent scenes it left me tired and yawning often without flinching at the bloody scenes. The movie also lacks any suspense putting upon a more lighter setting rather than the first which seemed more like a modern episode from “The Twilight Zone”.
The story is very confusing and often left me pausing the DVD to figure out what in god’s name they were talking about. Heck, even the actors seemed confused while muttering the nonsensical lines. The first storyline was simple: you cheated death, now he’s back to finish the job. In here it tries to become too philosophical and attempts to mean something but fails and just comes off as desperate. The problem I had with this movie too is that the presence of death is resorted from a demonic presence to a mere trickster. In the first film he relied on human error to kill his victims; it’s called “cause and effect”, people! For example (bear with me), in the first one the teacher had cold liquor in a mug, and then put hot tea in it which caused it to crack from the change in temperatures.
She put the mug on her plugged in computer which leaked liquid into the device which in turn caused a breakdown causing the screen to explode in the woman’s face putting shards of glass into her neck. In this, death does a whole bunch of cheesy booby traps, one of which involving a ball and mouse trap that looked like it jumped off the screen of a bad “Looney tunes” episode and made me cringe in my seat. Eck! The film also tends to have your usual cast of characters and stereotypes in the movie: the impish main character, the husky love interest, the skeptic nonbeliever, the rich snobby girl, and the stoned druggie. It all becomes so predictable and you know only a few will make it to the end of the film. Also, the studios give top-billing to Ali Larter who doesn’t do much in the movie and isn’t the main focus of the story. She simply acts as a helper within the survivors only to be killed off later on.
Alas, as all films do, this has a terrible ending and it seems the screenwriters didn’t know how to cut it off (pun intended). The inevitable last five minutes features a very cheesy and somewhat campy incident that looks like the filmmakers turned around and laughed at the audience thus ruining the entire shock factor of the film. As where the ending in the original film left you paranoid and dripping with surprise, this one will make you laugh, and for some will make them cringe. Decent at best this is a lighter, campier, but gorier sequel to the original. Pop this in for an entertaining time and hope death doesn’t come for you.