Demons 2

Greenlighting sequels immediately after the first one was a hit and rushing them into production seems like such a Hollywood thing to do, but Italians clearly took a page from Hollywood's playbook for this one and I'm not so sure that's a good thing.

Demons 2 was released the year after the original hit theaters and it appears to have had about as much thought and care put into it as one would think. There are a few imaginative moments, but it's mostly a slow retread of the previous film down to even aping the aimless young people riding around the city in their car subplot while the theater/apartment complex is being infested with the titular demons.

This time, the demons emerge through a movie on the TV (via some admittedly excellent effects work) and infect a spoiled birthday girl named Sally who, in turn, ends up infecting her entire birthday party who, in turn, end up infected the whole floor who, in turn...well, you get the picture.

The special effects and makeup are great, but the whole film feels a lot more tame than the original (usually, sequels try to ratchet up the gore a bit) and it's too hard to care much when you can feel them repeating every beat of the original.