Sadly, Are You Scared 2 is one of those sequels…one of those sequels that proves that a sequel is almost always a bad idea because they’re so desperate to cash in on a name that they’ll put any kind of sludge up on screen. And that is the case with Are You Scared? 2, a sequel that can’t quite hold the mustard against its halfway decent predecessor.
Jumping on the “geocaching” bandwagon, by which people armed with GPS locators go wandering the planet looking for random stuff that’s been buried in the ground. And when Team DNA, a geocaching band with growing notoriety on the web, goes for their record-breaking run, they run afoul of a crew of maniacs hosting their OWN web-based broadcast with a much more sinister bent. The name of THAT webcast is, essentially “kill the stupid geocachers”. Aided and abetted by a crowd of rich degenerates who are willing to pay exorbitant sums to watch people die slowly and messily.
Yes, it’s torture porn mixed with a cheesy game show and brought to you on the strength of a halfway decent Saw knockoff. That’s all the original really was, you know, which is why I really wasn’t holding out much in the way of hope for this one to be any good.
I admit, when it started, I actually thought I might be pleasantly surprised, especially when I discovered that genre favorite Tony Todd was going to be involved. He’s a genre favorite actor for a reason, folks–pretty much everything he shows up in, he turns in a decent performance. There aren’t very many roles that gravelly-voiced genius can’t turn out solidly.
I have to say “not very many” of course because for what may be the first time in recent memory, Todd has officially screwed the pooch. I’m watching him play the guy behind the whole thing and I’m really a lot more bored than I should be. I’m bored mostly because all Todd will do is mutter vaguely at his monitors and do random stuff like:
1. Play with his pet turtle. He’s named it “Timothy”. I’m baffled and disgusted all at the same time that they’d waste my time with this garbage.
2. Water his plants. He uses a spray bottle.
3. Drink wine. He seems to prefer red.
Frankly, the torture porn involved in this was bad enough, but when you intermingle it with scenes from the newest HGTV series “At Home With A Deranged Lunatic”, the whole thing just falls apart.
After how the first one turned out, I was at least hoping for a little bit of more of the same– I couldn’t believe I was hoping for more of the same!–but what I got was a badly planned, badly realized hash of a movie that couldn’t have been worse if it tried. The plot holes were massive (did no one think to maybe, you know, break a window to get out of the building?). The dialogue was godawful (if you have to fill script pages by having characters repeat dialogue, you desperately need editing). And if anyone actually manages to care about any of these characters, I’ll be just all sorts of amazed.
So if you’re looking to watch hot chicks get tortured and dismembered for no clear reason, or for sequels that have nothing to do with their predecessors, or for a truly lousy movie, then Are You Scared 2 is going to be exactly what you need.
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