It’s Tales from the Hood 2 vs. Terrortory 2! Are they worthy of their predecessors?
TERRORTORY 2 (2018)
I was psyched that a second Terrortory landed on Prime out of nowhere, and it’s just as satisfying as the first anthology with the added bonus of Halloween playing a role in several of the tales.
Rather than clear cut stories, at times the tales are woven into the wraparound, which involves two guys hiking in the infamously ominous woods we were introduced to in the first film. They begin sharing stories about the horrors that have gone on there…
1st story – Now this is awesome. A couple heading into the Terrortory stops to make wishes in a garden. Turns out her wish spawns his wish. Eek!
2nd story – The wraparound hikers meet up with some kids hunting for the pumpkin headed killer from the first film. All I can say is, stupid kids asked for it…
3rd story – Three old dudes discover a treasure trail in the Terrortory marked by a vine of pumpkins that eventually turn into killer Jack O’ lanterns! Awesomely cool and campy dismemberment ensues!
4th story – When a man goes looking for his missing wife and daughter in the woods, he stumbles upon a horrific Halloween “party”.
5th story – The wraparound becomes its own story as the two hikers encounter the killer clown from the first film.
Can’t wait for the third film, especially since the first two installments have introduced me to some awesome now wave music to play on my Future Flashbacks show. This time around it was Favorit89 with “Plastic Hearts,” and Freeweights with “Everybody Wants My Name.”
TALES FROM THE HOOD 2 (2018)
Everyone was so pumped for this sequel over 20 years later and from the same directors…including me. So I blind bought it. Before the Blu-ray even reached my house, I saw it getting trashed online.
Running 110 minutes and featuring 5 stories plus a wraparound, I found it impossible not to find something to like about it. Most impressive is how many of the social issues brought up resonate as if they were literally written in the past two weeks with all the bullshit that has been going on in politics. Of course there are no metaphors here; the issues are in your face and spelled out literally.
The wraparound has a privileged white rich dick harassing women and being totally racist as he hires our host to put life experiences into the programming of his robot police force. Our host obliges with some stories…
1st story – This is how you start a horror anthology. A trio of young people breaks into a museum of negrosity to steal a racist doll. Yep, it’s a killer doll story. It’s campy, gory, and even has a guest appearance by someone from the original film.
2nd story – Focusing on issues within the black community, this tale has a black guy killed by a group of black thieves come back for revenge…using the body of a fraud medium.
Bryan Batt (Scream Queens TV show, Kiss Me Guido, Jeffrey), the white guy playing the medium, is very funny when he “becomes” a black guy.
3rd story – This is a good old vampire quickie. A Tindr hookup goes wrong for everyone involved.
4th story – The longest story is about a black republican who drinks the Kool-Aid and defends all the racist shit heads in his party. Things go horribly wrong for him. It feels to me like an attempt to capture the Get Out vibe, but it just didn’t do much for me. And the rich white dude in the wraparound agreed, for he actually says it was the worst story!
5th story – The fifth story is the wraparound conclusion, and all I can say is that robots stomp around shooting laser bullets like something out of Battlestar Galactica 1978.
The stories were definitely more entrenched in straight up horror in the original film, which is my biggest gripe about this sequel. It’s more like Tales from the Hood lite…like these could be urban versions of Tales from the Darkside episodes.
