I really liked Steve Monroe's remake in 2010 but I had severe misgivings about plunking down five bucks to see this sequel. The 2010 film was a jaw-dropping improvement on the original. The characters seemed three-dimensional, the situations way more tense and uncomfortable, and even some moral greyness toward the end of the film, which only drew me in more emotionally. When a movie is as in-your-face brutal as the ISOYG franchise is known for being, it walks a thin line --- at least for those of us who don't just want gratuitous rape and torture.
Unfortunately, Part 2 fails to bring the most essential spice to this workmanlike stew: an engaging and realistic plot. This is partly a limitation of the ISOYG premise. How many locales can really accommodate this kind of story effectively? I would have been happy with another trip to Hicksville, but no...the sequel takes us to Bulgaria of all places (from New York, no less!) then situates a good part of the move in the underground sewer system. That's...a problem, for many reasons, but chiefly because most of the sets are so damn dark that its difficult to even comprehend what's happening much of the time.
This brings us into a series of almost laughable "I've written myself into a corner" scenarios. Let's see...Katie, our heroine in Part 2, is kidnapped from her apartment by three Slavic types (and that's all they are...TYPES). One kills her next door neighbor. They somehow magically get his body out of the apartment with little detection in the middle of the day. OK, fine...it can happen if you're lucky and a really seasoned killer. Then, Katie awakens in an underground basement/torture chamber in...yes..Bulgaria. How did she get there? Well, trust us...it's possible. Not likely, but possible. Then, she goes to the cops but is waylaid by a blond Butch woman who just happens to be the mother of the guy who killed her boyfriend. OK, maybe she could have been sent there by the guys, probably was, but...what are the odds her attacker would have a cop for a mother...really? That's not even counting the payback part of the picture where Katie suddenly becomes a survivalist (sorry, hailing from Missouri and being able to rig a mouse trap doesn't cut it) so tough that she can live in a sewer, construct elaborate torture devices, set them up down there.... This movie keeps asking you to buy holes in the writing so often that you could create a drinking game out of it.
Then we have Jemma Dallender's performance, which I have to say is actually fairly strong considering the crap she's been given for dialog. Where the original gave some very strong stinging barbs for Butler, Dallender is virtually left to repeat LINE BY LINE everything....and I mean EVERYTHING...her tormentors said to her. Must have saved a lot of time on the screen writing budget but it's a snooze for us. 2010 had very innovate revenge traps that were custom-tailored to the villains. Here it's strictly by the numbers standard torture pot pourri. At the end Dallender is literally only screaming her lines...she substitutes volume for intensity and it doesn't work but really...wouldn't you be a mental wreck trying to carry this four star disaster?
I'd like to completely blame Monroe but this has Zarchi's mediocre stink all over it. Maybe his social security payments have dried up.
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