Director: Anthony Perkins
Year: 1986
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
After deciding to leave the Church, a nun winds up at the fabled motel and decides to stay for a while as they both begin battling the demons that affect them, but when a rash of disappearances plague the visitors of the motel they find a shocking secret about what's the true nature behind the motel.
Review:
This one isn't all that bad an entry in the long-running series. The biggest aspect of this one is the fact that it's far more generously shot giving it a far better technical appearance. In one dazzling scene, there's a re-staging of the shower murder mixed with a vision of the Virgin Mary, wherein he enters a shower room just as someone attempts to commit suicide, where the sudden sight of the character in drag holding a knife becomes a vision of the Virgin Mary holding a crucifix. There's also a classic moment where the sheriff opens the ice machine and pulls out a cube to suck on in the blistering heat whilst he watches on in horror as the ice cubes are covered in blood. Another really intense moment comes from a daring escape from a drowning car and coming across a really unexpected entity in the quest to escape.
The fact that the slashing in the film features a little more action here is a nice bonus, and we get some really nice deaths. One is beaten with a guitar until it splinters, another gets sliced up with a knife that's framed to imitate the shower scene from the first one, another is decapitated, and there's also a brutal impaling with a knife, making this one fit in pretty well with the more kill-happy crowd. As well as the nice sleaze and nudity, this one wasn't all that bad. There's really only a couple of small comments against this one. For as much of an opportunity as there was to kill, very rarely does it show through. It's not as big of a body count as there really could've been, and it probably could've done a little better had it off a couple more here and there.
The other major beef is that the film tries way too hard to mix in several different themes and ideas that some of them get shuffled around and get a little confusing. The religious angle for the events was a big one as it serves its purpose of getting her featured in an angelic light but it is melded into the other storyline and it becomes a mess. As well, the psychosis angle is once again brought up and it's quite boring to retread the same ground once again in the series, especially in the later half where it comes up once again. However, other than those issues, this wasn't all that bad of a film.
Overview: ***.5/5
A highly impressive sequel effort that does have some big issues to it, there are some rather enjoyable factors to this one that manages to have a few minor letdowns keeping it back. Viewers who are curious about it or are fans of the franchise so far will want to give it a shot while most others might want to heed caution with this one.
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