When last we met, the focus was on horror sequels that flat out soiled some of our favorite franchises. There may have been some controversy (yes Halloween III was true to what Carpenter wanted to do with the series but it was still a bad idea and a horrible movie) and that’s to be expected on such an ugly trek down disappointment lane.
Even when a sequel is good enough to satisfy our bloodlust, however, it’s rare that any of the subsequent experiences equal the first. Some of this is simply because great horror comes from the unexpected. Once we know the cast of characters the element of surprise disappears. Kinda like heroin, you get that one great first high, then everything else is just a futile attempt to recapture it.
But every once in a while we get the rare gem that is a great sequel. And when that happens my friends, it is an occassion worth noting. Now let’s get it on!
As always, don’t forget to Spit Bullets below.
OK, take a breath and bear with me here. There’s little question this is not the best sequel in the series, but you can’t ignore the fact that Jason Voorhees as we now know him wouldn’t exist without Part 3, 3-D or not. And quite frankly, this movie makes pretty good use of 3-D. Spear guns, eyeballs, all sorts of fun stuff. Plus some of the kills are classically brutal. That’s all beside the point, however, because Jason would just be a sack-headed moron psycho without this movie. For that it gets respect.
There are some slow points and annoying characters in this baby, but when you get to watch The Chin battle his own hand, and see Ash attach that f*cking chainsaw to his arm, I simply don’t understand how instantaneous genre-gasm doesn’t occur. Plus this keeps the horror amped up well, which Army Of Darkness (going for a more straight comedic tone) fails to do.
Wanna learn how to do an STD right? Watch this movie. Sure it just came out. But everything from the reality show concept (who doesn’t want to watch those idiots get picked off), to the casting (Go Rollins!), to the sheer brutality of it all (I won’t spoil anything if you haven’t seen it yet, but thank you unrated DVD) are top notch. This is like finding a hooker who thinks you’re cute and actually gets into the trick. Doesn’t happen that often, but when it does it’s a special treat!
It’s difficult to revitalize a franchise that has given into parodying itself. At a certain point the fun is gone because none of the original intensity remains and the rules of the universe have been manipulated so much that nothing is ever really at stake. Seed of Chucky managed the hat trick of making us care again, scaring us a bit again, and delivering a fun movie. Nothing can ever match Chucky’s first open attack in Child’s Play, but the delicious scene of an F/X guy getting beheaded, and Jennifer Tilly not realizing it because he’s doing F/X for a horror movie, is the rare kind of intense, creative fun we want to see more of in our sequels.
Humans are resilient, and some people are always going to get lucky when the shite hits the fan. So what does happen when everything seemingly goes to hell if all the people in the world aren’t annihilated. That’s explored with brutal efficiency in this intense second child of Danny Boyle’s original nouveau zombie concept. Undercutting everything in this flick is the realization that as much as we try to control the world around us, there will always be that unanticipated thing that f*cks everything up. It doesn’t matter what’s coming to get us – zombies, terrorists or super viruses – someday all our fail safes will falter. And that’s the scariest shite to contemplate of all.
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