By Richard Winters
My Rating: 6 out of 10
4-Word Review: Family gets terrorized again.
The Freeling family (Craig T. Nelson, Jobeth Williams, Heather O’Rourke, Oliver Robins) has abandoned their old neighborhood in Cuesta Vista where they were traumatized by ghosts and into the house of Diane’s elderly mother Jess (Geraldine Fitzgerald). They hope here their lives will return to normal, but at the site of where their old house once stood a ground crew digs up a cave filled with the skeletal remains of people that were lead by the Reverend Henry Kane (Julian Beck) an insane man who lead his followers to death many years prior because he proclaimed the world was going to end. His spirit though remains restless and he appears in human form to go after Carol Ann by calling her through her toy telephone. The Freeling parents realize they are no match for him, so Taylor (Will Sampson) an Indian shaman is brought in to protect their daughter as well as giving the father tips on how to fight-off the evil spirit.
As sequels go this one isn’t too bad. The script still has enough interesting twists to keep it intriguing and the special effects are greatly improved. I also liked here that we get to see the other world where the spirits live something that was woefully missing in the first. One of my favorite moments is when Steve swallows some Tequila that has a worm in it that is possessed by the spirit of the evil Kane. The worm then grows inside Steve’s body until he has to vomit it out where it continues to grow into large proportions, which is a genuinely freaky moment. Some other good scenes are when Diane gets swallowed up into the ground by skeletons reaching up from the dirt and pulling her in and watching Robbie, the son, get tied up by the metal of his braces is really cool too. It’s unlikely there would be enough metal from his braces to cover his whole body like it does here, but the segment still gets points for its creativity.
The characters though aren’t quite as interesting. The women had stood out in the first installment, but that all gets lost here. Jobeth Williams, who played this groovy, adult flower child who was open to new things and experimenting around, is much more of a subdued mom here behaving like a typical suburbanite mother would, which is boring. O’Rorke is still good and so is Rubenstein though her role is greatly diminished and I wasn’t sure why the Indian character needed to be brought in at all as I would’ve thought Zelda could’ve handled those duties. Sampson’s performance is good, but his role just seemed unnecessary. Domonique Dunne, who played the older daughter in the first one is nowhere to be seen due to her having died in real-life at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, but I still thought they should’ve mentioned something even if it was just in passing like she was away in college to help explain her absence.
On the male end Nelson’s part is much more colorful as in the first one he was rather transparent, but he gets some good lines and manages to completely take over the proceedings though I wished it had been a little more balanced between him and Williams. Julian Beck though who plays the evil preacher stands-out the most. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and ended up dying before the production had wrapped, but the illness did help give him a gaunt appearance, which helped accentuate his creepiness.
Logic wise there were a few holes. Having the insurance company completely unaware that Freelings house had essentially gotten eaten-up by the spirits didn’t make sense. I know the idea was that they didn’t want any publicity, but their other neighbors had witnessed the house disappearing too and there’s just no way that someone wouldn’t have leaked that to the press and it becoming a major news story as houses evaporating into thin air in front of many witnesses just doesn’t happen everyday.
Having the boy and girl continue to sleep in the same bedroom looked very off. In the first one they also shared a room, but they were much younger and here the boy already has braces making it look like he’s ready to enter adolescents and he for sure then should be in his own room. The death of the grandmother gets handled in an equally awkward way as the kid wakes up and has no idea what the parents are crying about, but the old woman died in the house he was sleeping in and therefore he should’ve been awakened by the ambulance that came to take her away. In fact we never see the body being removed making it seem that they might’ve just left her there in her bed for all we know and a scene showing the family mourning at her gravesite would’ve been a far more seamless way to have explained (shown) her passing.
Spoiler Alert!
The wrap-up is a bit too lighthearted as it shows Will Sampson driving off with the family’s beaten up car and Nelson chasing after him as they have no other way to get home. The segment though is too comedic and a good horror film should still leave the viewer with a certain bit of unsettling mystery. After all this family had gone through a lot and what’s to say that things were finally really over. The family acts too relaxed when in reality all of them should be going through some form of post traumatic stress. The fact that they act so at ease didn’t ring true as most anyone else would be in a perpetual paranoid state looking over their shoulders every second for fear that the ghosts might have remanifested. A more somber image of them quietly walking away from the sight formerly known as their home with the sound of a wind howling would’ve been more appropriate for this type of story.
My Rating: 6 out of 10
Released: May 23, 1986
Runtime: 1 Hour 31 Minutes
Rated PG-13
Director: Brian Gibson
Studio: MGM
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 