I know I've said this before but it bears repeating: I love horror anthology films and All Hallows' Eve 2 is such a film. But do I love it? The film has a director (or directors even) for each of the different parts of the film. And there are many different shorts in this one. I'm used to three maybe four different parts to an anthology film with or without a wrap around story but there are about a half a dozen different stories in this one. Some are as short as two or three minutes so they are a little more difficult to judge than the longer stories and none of the stories are more than maybe fifteen minutes. Everyone's mileage may vary not only as a whole for the film but for each different part.
This film has many actors who have little or no resume with a few exceptions. Julian Richings (The Witch, Cube, and Wrong Turn), Griffin Gluck (Why Him? and Just Go With It), Helen Rogers (VHS and Body), and Emily Alatalo (The Scarehouse and Spare Parts) are just a few that you may have heard of before. All of the actors, regardless if you have heard of them or not do a decent enough job here. Even all the child actors, which there are more than expected for a horror film, do better than expected. The makeup and effects are average here with a few times where they are better than that and are fairly terrifying even if they are a bit gross.
Several years ago I saw a short film titled The 9th Circle featuring Art the Clown who would later be in an anthology film titled All Hallows Eve which was disappointing for me. Art the Clown would later show up in a longer version of The 9th Circle titled Terrifier which was really good. While being a sequel, All Hallows' Eve 2 does not feature Art the Clown, unfortunately, but it is a better film so I'll take the trade off. We will give this one three old VHS tapes out of five so while I may not have loved it I did enjoy it. A good film for a late October evening with your own horror honey curled up together under a blanket with a cup of hot chocolate. Enjoy!
Both ALL HALLOW'S EVE films are really dim in my memory but apparently I'm of the opposite opinion: I gave the first movie 3 1/2 stars and the sequel 2 1/2. The second film to me seemed more like a bunch of unrelated short films that were previously made that were stuck together into a movie. I do remember not liking it as much as the first film. Whereas the first film was really no great shakes either and earned an extra half star due to Art the Clown's appearance (which was certainly the best part of the first film). So basically ALL HALLOW'S EVE is really a 3 star film in my opinion which gets a half star boost from Art. ALL HALLOW'S EVE 2 I remember as being quite dull (I can't remember a single thing about it) and got a 2 1/2 star rating from me. Of course, all of this doesn't really matter since it's TERRIFIER that's the one to watch (and, from what I hear, TERRIFIER 2 even more so).
ReplyDeleteWell if you think it is better than the first, that is a good thing. I was just so-so on the first. And I gotta say, Art the clown doesn't do much for me.
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