At the time of this review, "She Was So Pretty 2" had a 6.3 rating but not a single person had written a review. 6.3 but the majority of votes were low low low with at least one obligatory 10. Hard to go by that so I threw the dice and watched. I wish I hadn't and nearly tossed in the towel a couple of times but decided that SOMEONE needed to take the time to help potential viewers have an idea what they were getting into. Hopefully others will eventually follow.
Personally I hated it.
Jerry Larew and Corey Rutter play Alfred and Baldwin, respectively. They spend the entirety of the film murdering people who fall for Baldwin showing up at their homes at night flashing a badge and giving the victims a very unlikely reason to go inside and check around. In the meantime, Alfred apparently always finds an open door in the back and overcomes them with chloroform. When the victims wake up, Baldwin taunts them then starts cutting off fingers. Alfred suffocates them with plastic bags and then they mutilate the bodies and Alfred slow dances with the dead, dismembered women. Every time. Numerous times. Done economically and quickly and frankly I got so bored at one point that I just fast forwarded through the montage.
We don't know how or why these two men are murdering' pals because there's precious little exposition provided in this film. Baldwin is clearly a psychopath, killing because he seems to enjoy it. Alfred has something mentally off about him, as he is just quiet and creepy and yeah, likes to slow dance with dismembered women.
Somewhere in between all the murderin', Alfred is wandering around at night looking at the Christmas decorations in a store window. Suddenly a very young girl who frankly looks about 13 appears and incredibly has no sense of stranger danger about Alfred and gives him her phone number! I know, right? I yelled at the TV about this. Again, we are given no background on her. I thought at first maybe she was a runaway but she wouldn't have a phone, would she? Maybe she was a prostitute? But she was too impossibly innocent to be hooking. I just don't know, but they hit it off and now Alfred has a girlfriend. This will be important at film's end.
Eventually they come across a family who actually doesn't fall for Baldwin's lame cop routine and things start going south and thank goodness because boy this thing needed to end soon. Had I not been determined to offer a review I'd have given up in the first 20 minutes. But I will admit that the ending surprised me...which earned it an extra star.
Production-wise, the acting was okay, although I did not buy Rutter as a psychopath. He was trying to play menacing without crazy, but I just found him to be a jerk with a punchable face. Larew was okay but had very few actual lines. Considering the budget, I thought the cinematography was pretty good except for day shots, which were bleached out and harsh looking. But as the majority of the film is at night or inside, the majority of the shots were done well. Editing was effective, score was unobtrusive. The special effects were very problematic, because some shots were impressive, then juxtaposed with absolutely ridiculous looking stuff. Most of it was poor, but I guess they figured if they threw enough blood on everything no one would notice.
Ultimately though, the whole package just didn't work for me. If you're interested in gore, the gore isn't that great. If serial killing is your thing, keep in mind I fast forwarded past it out of boredom. If you like character studies, you're given zero backstory to work with. I just can't recommend as having much entertainment value.
