Director: Tory Jones
Year: 2022
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
After moving to a new town, a family learns the town is still in the grip of a brutal reign of terror from a maniacal serial killer a decade earlier that has returned once again to infect more citizens under his spell to carry out a new massacre against the town, forcing them to find a way to stop him.
Review:
There's quite a lot to like with this one. Among its better features is the rather enjoyable setup that properly showcases the expansion of the universe set up from the original. Not only opening with the murder of the parents in the town but the series of random and brutal murders that are shown throughout the rest of the area detailing the deluge of copycat murders taking place with those looking to follow the influence of the killer over the townspeople, this one starts off with a rather impressive series of background building on the main killer. With the obsessiveness to stop him and solve the cases that have emerged in the time since that preoccupies the rest of the detectives’ time and the secondary storyline of the family arriving in the midst of all this, the main setup to the film comes off incredibly well.
This sets the stage for a strong slew of enjoyable and brutal slashing action to come about here. With the concept of the followers carrying out the killers’ instructions and rampaging through town like a group of like-minded maniacs, their crazed energy and ruthless behavior make the scenes of their ambush on the transport workers or the confrontation at the brothers’ concert feel that much more brutal and impactful. Likewise, the great encounter afterward involving the bandmembers being stalked through the abandoned house the cat-and-mouse chases, and confrontations that occur inside the house where the family arrives to rescue their kidnapped children and try to put a stop to the killer and his followers manage to provide even more fun here with some brutal encounters, some nice bloodsoaked deaths and carnage, as well as the revelations about the family connection that provides some of the better elements here that hold this one up overall.
There isn’t much to dislike here but it does have some issues. One of the most obvious issues is an overlong running time dragged out by several instances that don’t really need to be there. The main one is a superfluous romance angle between several of the kids in the band who are going through the usual teenage strife involving the lack of confidence in asking out the girl that’s obviously interested in him and spending a ton of time wandering around the backstage area or trying to make sense of the disappearance of their friends which amounts to several points of simply wandering around the building which takes up quite a lot of time here. Slightly more infuriating is the incessant weapon-dropping that occurs in the final confrontation that allows the assistants to constantly get back into the fight despite numerous occasions where the family has the upper hand in the struggle leaving everything to feel like it’s being dragged out for no reason. These are the few drawbacks to this one.
Overview: ****/5
A rather impressive and enjoyable indie effort, this one comes off quite likable as a follow-up that not only expands on the story of the first one but also has a lot of fun slashing action to hold it up. Those who enjoyed the original effort or are fans of this kind of indie slasher will have a lot to like here while only those that don't like this style should heed caution.
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