Director: Michael Crum
Year: 2019
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Following their previous supernatural encounter, a pair of amateur paranormal investigators hear about a potential investigation in an abandoned amusement park and set out with old friends to look at the location, only to realize they’ve accidentally stumbled into the literal depths of Hell.
Review:
This one ended up being a marginally better sequel with some enjoyable elements. One of the more entertaining features here is the manner in which this one brings out a rich history to set up the present. That there’s a lot of animosity and hard feelings that are brought up with the two teams being former colleagues and a split in their organization resulting from their immature behavior that was setup in the first film which is some fine continuity and helps to sell the reluctance in getting together. There’s also a lot to like with their investigation once they start to work together, from the interviews with the local to their first encounter inside the room with the possessed girl who begins to display far more deadly powers and tricks than they expected, especially once they start encountering the supernatural actions like walking on the ceiling or reacting strongly to Holy Water.
That also leads to the film’s best aspect in the investigation of the main park. The supernatural antics here are driven up to a wholly absurd level with the team encountering demons and monsters almost from the moment they arrive. A fantastic encounter in the nearby lake featuring one character tormented by the spirit of her aborted child who turned various figures into vicious monsters is merely the start of the fun with this one, taking the other characters to even more terrifying extremes. Watching the literal demons emerge and torture them in graphic, brutal manners as they’re dragged around the park, cut into and bleed profusely or interact with the demonic creatures that are shown later on in frenzied final half. With the series of endlessly dark and chilling scenes throughout here and a truly warped reaction to the events that are played out, these here are what hold this one up rather nicely.
However, even with all this, there’s still a major, overriding factor here in that once again the main characters nearly ruin the film with their antics. Once again, the feeling here is supposedly based on the film treating them like heroes but they’re anything except heroes, which the film had the good grace at least to point out with the initial refusal to work with them but they still come off with the same feeling of the first entry. There’s plenty of utterly moronic remarks and comebacks featured here once again, and the entire film is absolutely centered around their once again throwing people into a situation beyond their control and ultimately ends with their death due to their ignorance of the situation. Thankfully, this feature doesn’t run as continuously as it did in the first one so it’s not as detrimental, and along with the lackluster finale due to the apparent low-budget these here do lower this one overall.
Overview: *.5/5
A general improvement in many ways of the first one with more polished and enjoyable horror scenes while still maintaining some of the big critical flaws from the first one, in the end this is a fine if slightly flawed effort. It's worth a look for those who are fans of the original or looking for a chilling, low-budget indie effort, while those taken aback by the flaws should heed caution here.
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