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When you mention Elisabeth Bathory, you remind me of two things; That scene in Hostel 2 with
the bath-tub and that really *** horror-movie about video-games called Stay Alive, so already
when they go on to say that Gerri Dandridge is in fact not Gerri Dandridge but Elisabeth
Bathory...uggghhhh. This almost didn't even need to be a reboot,
did it? You could have tweaked the script so that it was a sequel. Not that that changes
anything because I would say that the script is one of the few things I liked about this
movie. The screenplay certainly has quite a set of balls and wants to try something
new, but it's very lazily put together especially towards the end. There's an inconsistent tone
because the film can't decide whether it wants to be like the original or like the remake
and as a result all of the characters become a weird hybrid of both their original and
remake-y selves. Ed is the one that gets out the most unscathed.
In fact, this Ed is way better than the one in the previous movie because he's so much
more fun. Christopher Mintz-Plasse had nothing to do except endlessly whine back in the previous
movie whereas here he's a lot more like that smartass with boundless energy like the Stephen
Geoffreys incarnate. But everyone else is just so bland. Cast wise, I would say the
stand-outs are Chris Waller and Will Payne, the former for managing to emulate Stephen
Geoffreys pretty well and the latter for managing to turn in a decent performance with such
bland material. Sean Power, who is surprisingly not a ***-star with that name, is okay but
he's playing a Peter Vincent that lacks the personality of Roddy MacDowell or David Tennant's
versions and Sacha Parkinson comes off like a discount Tara Reid as Amy. But I think the
one we should all feel sorry for is Jaime Murray because she is bringing her a-game
and she is let down oh so hard in the film's climax.
By what, you may ask? Well, this film's make-up effects are absolutely atrocious. I am serious.
The standard vampire fangs and contacts even look so fake, like they can be easily just
taken out and the characters will cease to be vampires. We've even gone back to the actor
not being able to speak properly because of his fangs. When Ed attacks Peter Vincent,
"he talksth like thith, Peeter Vinthenth!" and when Peter burns his face with a cross
like in the original, the make-up looks like cheese pizza. I actually got hungry for cheese
pizza watching that. Then there's Gerri's final form...Oh my god, it looks like the
dumbest, shittiest, most counter-intuitive...she looks like she walked off the set of a bad
episode of Doctor Who and it just, it kills any respect I had for the film, as small as
that amount may have initially been. What ruins this film for me. What drags this
over the line that separates good from bad, is how this movie is shot. I noticed it most
during the kill made when Charley is in Gerri's house. She strings up a naked bleeding body
Elisabeth-Bathory-style and I find myself yelling at the screen to cut away from it
because he lingers on it too much that it loses any actual meaning because I am immediately
turning against it. The movie then retorts by showing me the worst nude scene in cinema
history. But the camerawork and the editing gets even worse as we get to the chase scene
in the catacombs. See, shakey-cam is bad. It's hard to pull off and if you mess it up
it ruins your action. Blinking editing is bad. This isn't the 90s. Shakey-cam and Blinking
editing combined is the equivalent of committing physical assault to my senses.
Remember how I said that the openings to these films tend to be an indicator as to how the
film is going to be? The first one had camp and character development, the remake had
horror and suspense? Well this one has interesting concepts with dull presentation. The opening
kill is shot in a clever way what I will cite as the only good use of found-footage in a
horror movie, but the scene itself ties into jack-*** and is therefore a tad tedious.
It reflect this movie as a whole. There are some interesting ideas and attempts to take
the story in a new direction, but it's just done in a way that makes it either boring,
nonsensical or physically painful. The only thing left to do is figure out if Fright Night
2: New Blood is any worse than the Lost Boys or John Carpenter's Vampires direct-to-dvd
sequels.