The first 'The Houses October Built' blew me away back in 2014. I went in with almost zero expectations and left astonished by how good it was. Did I have my hopes up for the sequel being able to live up to that same level? No, they almost never do after all particularly in the horror genre. Did I hope for more quality than I got though? Absolutely, this was bordering on one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. Does it detract from what the original put forward? Unfortunately yes it does in a big way.
By about the 1 hour 15 minute mark I thought to myself: has anything actually happened yet? The answer was no. Sure we had seen some fun haunted houses (or hay rides apparently) and there was the weirdly edited shots of the clown masked guy following them, however this felt more like a documentary to that point than anything else. It was filler, plain and simple. It's absolutely unacceptable for a horror movie to run for an hour and 40 minutes with that little happening in the opening 75 minutes. No excuse for that whatsoever.
Then the big final sequence (or the pay off if you wish to call it that) begins and I think to myself: this better bloody be worth it. Well let me assure you it wasn't. It was poorly done, predictable and thought it was a hell of a lot smarter than it actually was. The editing was also very poor in that final sequence. Possibly the best done scene in the entire film was the very final one with the sign, however that had basically nothing to do with the film, so bravo. Please stay away from this film. Not only is it terrible, there's a very good chance it will ruin the original for you too. Yuck.
