Director: Steven M. Smith, Zane Casablanca, Zane Quazzani, Svenja Quazzani, Mark Behar
Year: 2018
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: Haunted 2: Theater of Blood
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Arriving at a remote farmhouse, a team of paranormal researchers invites a group of citizens to join them on a shoot of their ghost-hunting show, but as they carry out their shoot are shocked to learn their attempts at summoning the paranormal have worked a bit too well.
Review:
For the most part, this was a pretty solid if still flawed follow-up. Much like the original, this works incredibly well when dealing with the group’s arrival and initial exploration of the house, setting up a means of rationalizing why they’re shooting there. With the first instances of them looking over the history of the house, the series of encounters and reports involving the supernatural taking place at the location, and why they’re going to be shooting there, this manages to offer up the kind of logical starting point that it all gets going with. The idea of the professional team of investigators trying to go around getting good footage of the situation and trying to handle the clueless independent researchers who are getting caught up in the situation that’s out of their hands, this comes across rather nicely when trying to focus on the investigation part of the job. Getting a solid behind-the-scenes look at the nature of what goes into the nature of filming such a show or how to handle the various personalities on a shoot carries everything rather nicely, providing some creepy moments alongside the more traditional setpieces expected in this kind of investigation scenario.
As that works really well for the film, it suffers from a lot of the same problems that the first one featured. The majority of the film’s running time is spent on the team’s personal issues with each other, and doesn’t really offer up the kind of engaging content that should be featured with having inexperienced amateurs trying to find ghosts on a professional crew, as the scenes with them going back and forth on the validity of their professions are not that interesting. Trying to make sense of these people trying to follow through on different viewpoints with their lifestyle is supposed to create conflict, but the endless conversations trying to match the psychic’s spiritual gifts against the more pronounced professional equipment of the team. That just makes everything feel far too overlong at the expense of the action, as most of the encounters are stuck in a rather short series of pretty dull scenes, being more involved in listening to thudding noises in the distance or closing doors that aren’t as impactful as the scenes from the first one. These aren’t as detrimental as they should be, but it does lower this one overall.
Overview: **.5/5
A likable if flawed follow-up, there’s enough going on where it doesn’t seem like a total waste even though these positives are pretty overwhelmed by the negative issues on display. Those who appreciate these kinds of genre efforts or who are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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