FORMAT: 4K UHD (REWATCH)
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
(As posted on December 19th, 2007)
Director Lamberto (Macabre) Bava and producer Dario (Suspiria) Argento collaborate once again for this highly entertaining sequel to their cult hit Demons. Basically, if you’ve seen the first movie, you’ve seen this one. The only difference is that instead of demons coming out of a movie screen and killing a bunch of people in a theater, this time demons come out of a television set and kill a bunch of people in an apartment complex. The rules are still the same: Whenever the demons scratch or bite someone they become a possessed demon too. During the course of the movie the demons crash a birthday party, attack some muscle-bound chuckleheads at the gym, and chase the hero up an elevator shaft. In the end, a couple of uninfected people band together in the parking garage and the movie turns into a human demolition derby.
Bava fills the film with a lot of atmospheric moments, namely the scenes when the infected humans/demons are running down the hallway with lights shooting out of their eyes. Other scenes that will give you the heebie-jeebies include the scene where the demon is resurrected with blood and the part when a demon slowly forces his way out of the television set.
Bava also piles on the carnage with panache. There’s some groin grabbing, umbrella impaling, extreme manicuring, an Alien inspired chest bursting scene and of course, plenty of the requisite fingernail slashings we’ve come to expect in a Demons movie. Bava also gives us a couple twists on the demon lore by throwing in a freaky demon dog and a ferocious demon kid (obviously a midget in a suit, but who gives a flip) too.
As with the first movie, Demons 2 sometimes stumbles whenever it shifts its sights away from epicenter of the bloodletting and focuses on a couple meaningless peripheral characters who are OUTSIDE of the building. Whenever Bava does this, he loses a lot of momentum and whatever claustrophobic tension he’s created dissipates. Luckily, it doesn’t take him long to get the suspense crackling once again. There’s also an inexplicable subplot involving a rubbery looking pint-sized demon who looks like a fugitive from a Ghoulies sequel that attacks a pregnant woman. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but it doesn’t jibe with the usual Demons mythos and the monster is about as scary as one of the creatures from Troll.
Despite its faults, Demons 2 is still a lot of fun and a worthy successor to the first film. A very young Asia Argento (daughter of Dario) has a small role as a little girl who gets to watch her parents become demonized.
A dumb bimbo in the film-within-a-film gets the movie’s best line: “I want to immortalize this moment!”
QUICK THOUGHTS:
Pound for pound, this is one of the strongest horror sequels of the ‘80s. It gives the audience what they want from a sequel to Demons while only tweaking things slightly. The apartment setting was an inspired choice of scenery as it allows the carnage to play out on a broader scale than the original. (Even if I do miss the intimacy of the movie theater from the first one.) After all these years, the shot of the demon face coming out of the TV remains one of the most iconic of the ‘80s.
4K UHD NOTES:
This is another great transfer by the folks at Synapse. The darks run deep, and the brighter colors pop, especially during the blue-hued birthday massacre scene. The slimy green faces of the demons look awesome in 4K too, as does the scene where the demons, eyes glowing in the darkness, descend a winding staircase. In fact, the transfer is so good that you can clearly see the marionette stings holding up the little demon puppet during the scene where it attacks the pregnant chick now!
No comments:
Post a Comment