Director: Robert Hall
Year: 2011
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Following the encounter the previous night, the chrome-masked killer is revived and brought back by his secret government agency that hides his crimes in order to carry out a new rampage with a chosen victim, but when a power struggle within the agency allows the police a chance to save her they race to bring him down.
Review:
Overall, this was a disappointing if somewhat enjoyable enough follow-up. One of the better aspects at play here is the enhanced brutality and gruesomeness on display as the kills are incredibly fun. Focused entirely around the concept of random characters happening upon his rampage and then getting horribly and viciously sliced up as this one gets incredibly bloody at times. With spring-loaded scissors forced into their mouth and then triggered slicing the mouth open, a knife carving off the skin on a victim’s face, a multitude of over-the-top chest slicing that exposes inner organs and plenty of stabbings with the special knife of his, there’s plenty of blood and gore on display here which comes into play in the film’s one genuinely exciting confrontation with the killer where he tries to get into the barricaded stand in the middle of the factory. Combined with the still intimidating killer, these here are the main enjoyable factors with this one.
There are some problems here. Among the biggest issues is a contrived and wholly uninteresting method of reviving the killer after being soundly defeated and killed in the previous effort. The recollection of the bodies from the supermarket and the various loose ends around the building leading into the surgery to restore his face is fine in theory but the execution is a mistake. It’s a massive cheat to try to revive him in this method after what had occurred in the first film where his face melted off before it was bashed in with a bat and seems there only to further the idea of the corporation at the heart of the film as a huge contrasting angle than what happened in the first one simply to get the film made.
That ties into the other issue with this one in the overall subject and disappointing storyline here. The decision to render the dynamic chasing in the first one obsolete here by going for a police investigation effort into the events of the first one that is nowhere near as interesting or involved as it thinks it is. The cops go on to be the dumbest aspect present here, blatantly ignoring the situation to go charging into an unknown situation to get themselves killed, fail to follow proper procedure and can’t save the one character from being taken by the criminal organization right out of their own station. The clue-gathering is nonsensical and is right alongside the convoluted nature of the conspiracy team holding the killer at bay and covering up his crimes that it’s both insulting to think a whole murder spree goes unnoticed and dull to sit through. It’s not fast-forwarding-the-film dull but it’s still enough to lower this one significantly.
Overview: **.5/5
While it works as a fun delivery-system of brutal over-the-top gore and several somewhat decent stalking scenes, the rest of the film is a painful dredge of eye-rolling conspiracy talk and dreary investigation scenes that derail the simplicity of the original. Really only go for this one if you’re a fan of the first one or just in the mood for a serving of slasher brutality, while those who weren’t fans of the original or looking for something with more substance than that will be severely disappointed.
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