Review: My Super Psycho Sweet 16 Part 2

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

PLOT: Picking up a few weeks after the last film left off (you remember where that was, right?), Skye Rotter flees the town where her deranged father Charlie massacred a group of students at a Sweet 16 party. Now, finding refuge with her mother and half-sister, Skye once again discovers that her dear old dad is looking to stake a claim in her life.

REVIEW: There’s only one way to judge MY SUPER PSYCHO SWEET 16 PART 2, and that’s “Did it entertain?” You’re certainly not going in expecting David Fincher, and you know you’re not going to get performances you’ll be talking about for days. There won’t be many shocks and you’ll be lucky to find one plot twist you don’t see coming a mile away… Basic entertainment is the only real reward from something like this, and I guess this is my semi long-winded way of admitting that, yes, MY SUPER PSYCHO SWEET 16 PART 2 entertained me. There’s one sentence I never dreamt I’d type.

Lest you think I’m just a sucker for even the lowest-common denominator of horror film, consider that I pretty much loathed the first SUPER PSYCHO, a movie I watched just for the f*ck of it (indeed, why else would you?) and found virtually nothing to like about. Shrill, empty, unfunny and condescending, it was basically everything you’d expect from an MTV-produced movie. (Not to mention that it was completely devoid of even the most rudimentary suspense.) So an invitation to see a screening of the sequel did not exactly pop my cork, but I agreed to toss myself in the line of fire in the hopes it would rise a bit above the bottom of the barrel.

The plot is simple (and really doesn’t even require you to have seen the first one). After a lame dream sequence which she’s hardly even in herself – how often do your dreams star other people? – Skye Rotter (Lauren McKnight) drops everything and escapes the town where everyone knows her as the daughter of a masked maniac. She doesn’t even tell her unlikely boyfriend-in-waiting, the hunky Brigg (Chris Zylka), that she’s off to find the mom who abandoned her years ago. Yes, poor Skye has parental issues on both sides, as it turns out her mom left her when she was a baby, leaving her to be raised by psycho dad… That’s a burn.

Mom is now living the good life with a successful businessman and their daughter Alex (Kirsten Prout); while the folks are willing to accept Skye into their household, Alex is naturally a little more hesitant. Eventually, the two bond, even as Alex’s manipulative “friend” Zoe (Stella Maeve) finds out Skye’s dark secret and holds it over her to get what she wants: a birthday bash for Alex at a club that’s under renovation. Long story short: the kids hold the party at the club while Charlie Rotter comes looking for his little girl. Cue the shrieks and bad music.

If it sounds like a soap opera, it mostly is. The acting, production value, and script all smell like movie-of-the-week; it’s trash without being sleaze. However, once Charlie goes into action, the movie actually picks up: there are a handful of surprisingly nasty kills in the flick, certainly far and away more impressive in the violence department than the first one. One girl is burned alive and left a twisted, smoking husk, while another is smashed brutally in the face with a meat mallet; there are a couple of stabbings and slashings and blood does spray. I legitimately think the movie would be hard-pressed to get a PG-13 if it were released in theaters… (Don’t mistake me though – for hard-core horror fans, this is still nothing much; I’m just remarking on how ghastly some of the murder sequences are for a movie like this.)

I must admit, I kind of like Charlie Rotter as a villain. He’s not a faceless boogeyman in this, because obviously there’s no mystery revolving around who the killer is, but a seriously disturbed, dirty, sad nutcase of a man who thinks he’s doing right by his daughter. The few scenes where Alex Van actually gets to act as Charlie, whether he’s jealously confronting her surrogate father or her half-sister, are well played and creepy. He comes across as a tortured man, and in a movie called MY SUPER PSYCHO SWEET 16 2, he’s a more interesting character than he has any right being…

The other actors are fine – though truth be told, they’re a more likable bunch than the bland kids in MY SOUL TO TAKE; Lauren McKnight is a sympathetic and suitably traumatized lead, but it’s Stella Maeve – as the conniving, bitchy bad girl – who really impresses. She’s got “it”, as they say, and I’d wager she’s going to be hanging around for a while.

Of course, the door is left open for another sequel in the end, although in a slightly unorthodox way. In stark contrast to how I felt about seeing MY SUPER PSYCHO SWEET 16 2, I’ll be open-minded about part 3 – if only to see if they can keep the nasty streak going…

6.5 out of 10