Lamberto Bava Week: Demons 2

Welcome back boys and girls for Day 4 of Lamberto Bava Week and man I gotta say I was a bit surprised with this one. Given the reoccurring theme of shock and awe with a shoestring budget I have seen this week, imagine my surprise when a lesser sequel doesn't hold a candle to its predecessor. Seems like a very loosely connected sequel similar to A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, retooling the original work and altering the existing mythos because it is lazy writing in my opinion or just piss poor research of their own material. This is Demons 2.

Gonna pump you up!!!

So everything and everyone in the original film Demons was in fact supposed grounded into reality while this film is a movie within a movie? So we were watching a movie, watching a movie while in a movie??? Crack open your ibuprofen if you need it, because it gets odder. Our story follows pesky teens trespassing into a city that was deserted due to the demon outbreak... so does that mean in that reality, there was a demon/human war and there were severe casualties but they had plenty of time to crank out video documentaries/films about the subject matter? In the sense of it being a sequel it has demons and that is about it.

While we started off in the theater and expanded to the streets in the first film most of Demons 2 takes place in a substantial apartment building. A young couple being sweet and snuggly, a teenager having a birthday party with her friends, a family having some dinner and several musclebound jockos popping a sweat in the basement gym and thankfully the film has told us where everyone is.

Even movie titles want cake too.

A few folks are gazing at the idiot box with the show is focused on demons as the dialogue would have you belief this very thinly affiliation to the first movie and viewing this somehow releases the demons from the TV and into their really real world dimension as they proceed to go sickhouse throughout the apartment. With the athletes using a rudimentary series of makeshift melee weapons to fight, the rest of the building's tenants attempt to flee out of window washer harness, down the fire stairwell and even the fricking elevators to what avail??? Dare they try and hold back the all consuming onslaught of evil? When will self-preservation kick in?

A bit of trivia on our movie of the day.

I was deeply impressed with the practical effects of this film such as: the resurrection of the fallen demon was a wax hand melting and then the film was reversed and the demon popping out of the TV was an actor wearing a mask pressing his face into a screen of latex.

Bobby Rhodes who played Tony the pimp from Demons returned as a different character but yes I did snicker a bit. The demonic boy chasing after Hannah was actually played by adult dwarf actor Davide Marotta (Phenomena, Demons 2, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Passion of the Christ). With a more New Wave and Punk score and soundtrack we have tunes by Love and Rockets, Dead Can Dance, The Smiths and The Cult. What shocked me was seeing 11 year old Asia Argento joins our cast of players. Guess when your dad is the Italian master of Horror, this stuff doesn't phase you. Final vote is choppy editing, far-fetched story and not a single likable character. Sorry folks but the only pro I could find here was the makeup and FX were superior than the first film and that is about it.

BUUuuUuUuUURPP!!