See No Evil 2

See No Evil 2 (2014) is currently available on Tubi and picks up where the first film left off in the Mortuary where the bodies from the first film are being brought by the authorities. Unfortunately, the killer may not be as dead as he appears and he's pissed about what happened to his mom and he's ready to take it out on anyone he comes across.

This movie is codirected and co-written by Jen & Sylvia Soska (American Mary) and stars Glenn Jacobs (MacGruber), Danielle Harris (Urban Legend), Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps), Chelan Simmons (Tucker and Dale vs Evil), Kaj-Erik Eriksen (The Commish) and Greyston Holt (House of Chains).

It stinks they couldn't do more with a character that had so much potential. The main character is a cross of Michael Myers and Norman Bates. His makeup and missing eye scene were great. The blood splatter and setting were also solid. Unfortunately the kill scenes themselves were mediocre and even the well setup throat slash is a let down. With a little better writing and execution, this could have been a gem. Unfortunately, this doesn't live up to its potential. I would score this a 4/10 and recommend seeing it once.

I only gave it 3 stars because of Danielle Harris, Katharine Isabelle, and Kaj-Erik Eriksen. I'd give it 2 stars each for them because they deserve at least that much for carrying this mess, but giving this garbage 6 stars was far more than I felt comfortable doing. It's that bad.

Don't get me wrong, Ms Harris and Ms Isabelle ARE really good here, as they usually are, and Kaj-Erik is great too, he really is, and his chemistry with Danielle Harris is surprisingly good considering the utter tripe they're lumped with in this "movie". The "movie" so lacking that the directors had to drag out the opening, the ending, AND the credits rolling at the end just to reach the 90-minute mark. That's not the worst of it, though.

The worst thing they did was give Glenn Jacobs dialogue.

The ONLY thing that would have saved this mess (with the exception of Ms Isabelle, Ms Harris, and Mr Eriksen) was if they'd somehow managed to work in an angle that the morticians were WWE fans, particularly of Kane and Undertaker, and that they had a Kane mask replica hanging around AND that Jacobs' character had put that on instead of the crappy little plastic thing he half-wore. Instead we get TEMU Sloth from Goonies in a black leather apron and half the vocal skills.

After the first movie came out in 2006, I took a liking to it. It was a great source of mindless violence to get lost in for 2 hours or so, which is OK, sometimes you feel like watching something mindless. Thus, I was expecting great things from this movie, or at the very least, of it to live up to it's predecessor.

However, this movie flat out disappoints in every way possible.

The predictability is crushing, the facepalm moments are plenty, and I found myself shaking my head for the majority of the movie. It is the typical 'killer knows where everybody is, all the time- and manages to beat everybody to every destination- meanwhile the characters make stupid and convenient decisions for him" scenario.

But wasn't it the same for the first movie in 06? Yes, and no. This one is orders of magnitude worse.

This movie was on my top "to watch" list, and I am sad that it did not do better than anticipated, and by the looks of the other reviews, and the rating, it didn't live up to anybody else's expectations.

...even alternative lifestyle, fetish obsessed identical twins, apparently. The Soska Twins return for their first feature since their cult rape/revenge film American Mary. Why they were tapped to do a sequel to the WWE's franchise non-starter See No Evil, why they accepted, and why the movie is even being made 8 years after the original is anybody's guess. But it exists and I was actually psyched to see it, considering American Mary was interesting and unusual enough to be memorable, I actually kind of liked the first movie, and this one stars two of the great Scream Queens of our time, Danielle Harris (Halloween franchise, Hatchet franchise) and Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps franchise, Freddy vs. Jason, Hannibal the series), Suffice to say, I was sorely disappointed.

This is a lousy, slapped together sequel with nothing distinguishable about it. It occurs the night after the original movie's massacre as a pretty, young morgue attendant (Danielle Harris) is forced to work through her birthday to clean up all the bodies fanatically religious serial killer Jacob Goodnight (Kane) left in his wake before apparently being killed himself. She has his body, too. And when her friends decide to bring the party her to her, sneaking into the morgue after hours, one party goer (Katharine Isabelle), a drunken slut with a death fetish, sneaks off to check out Jacob's body.

Unfortunately, Jacob is apparently just as hard to kill as Jason Voorhees and equally good at playing possum. He wakes up, and he kills people. And that's it.

There's nothing much to See No Evil 2, the characters are poorly written, the acting is just okay, and the kills are generic, and not all that gory, nowhere near the level of the original. Danielle Harris has a fair amount of screen time, a nice switch from the glorified cameos she's been getting lately. Katharine Isabelle, on the other hand, only has a supporting role after playing the lead in American Mary and she does the sort of cheesy overacting she usually does when she knows the material she's been given is terrible.

See No Evil 2 makes a lot of mistakes. One of the more interesting part the first movie was that Kane looked like a troll made flesh, a towering, monster of a man killing people, usually by turning their own sins against them. Not so here. He wears a mask now, poor move that makes the movie more clichéd, and the kills are interchangeable and unimaginative. It's difficult predicting who will die and when, but that hardly matters because none of the characters are remotely interesting.

See No Evil 2 is so bad it not only kills the hopes for a See No Evil franchise but also seriously hurts anyone's hope that the Soska Twins will be horror's next big thing. This cheap looking, weak horror sequel is bad and was made by people that either didn't care or didn't know how to make a good movie.

See No Evil 2 follows directly on from the first film, which, by WWE Studios standards was an average film. The story sees the seemingly dead Jocab Goodnight and his victims being taken to the morgue where the birthday girl Amy is about to finish work and spend her birthday with friends, but she decides to stay and help out with the amount of bodies about to arrive. Instead, her friends bring the party to Amy and her co-workers.

Long story short, alcohol is consumed, sex is had and Goodnight returns from the dead to wreak havoc on the hapless morgue workers and the party people.

The real strong point is the direction by Jen and Sylvia Soska. If you're familiar with their work and a genre buff then you know what they are capable of. Their first film, Dead Hooker in a Trunk, had flashes of genius and the body horror film American Mary was one of the most original and important movies to hit the horror genre for a good 10 years.

Although the script was written by Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby and the only real weak point, it was the Soska's vision that brought to life the entire film. Danielle Harris, who has had a very up and down career performance wise, produced her best acting to date under the twins' guidance. As modern day scream queens, casting both Danielle Harris and Katharine Isabelle in the same film was a stroke of genius. Isabelle very nearly steals the whole show. Even Glenn Jacobs as the killing machine upped his game and gave a better performance.

WWE Studios made the best possible move in hiring Jen and Sylvia to direct. The film provides a lot of fun, some cool kill scenes and solid SFX with only a touch of CGI which makes this a great addition to the slasher sub-genre and a sequel that outweighs it's predecessor in every way.

To read my full review, head over to my blog - Maven's Movie Vault of Horror.