Redwood Massacre: Annihilation

This film is a big improvement on "The Redwood Massacre", but a heavy cold is a big improvement on influenza; most people would rather have neither. Although it may be considered a sequel or perhaps more accurately a follow-up, it has little in common with the first film apart from the setting. And there was no actual necrophilia in the original. Yes, there are some realistic if depraved special effects; the plot is extremely implausible as our group of ill-fated adventurers are lured or lure themselves to what is thought to be an abandoned RAF base but turns out to be something very different.

The final scene is a contradiction, reverting from horror to what some might consider comedy horror. The big question is, will it make you laugh or cry?

I am very surprised this movie got a sequel but I will say I loved that they used a character from the movie prior in the beginning.

Now it's pretty obvious that this is better then the first one; It's produced better, it's darker, the story was more interesting but still not that good and ended up creating more questions that were never answered, but they set themselves up perfectly for another movie so hopefully those questions get answered. Now something odd they did was change the origin story of the killer and even mentioned other attempts at making other killers. With the origin story changed they gave room for fan interpretations which is always fun; Mine is that the legend of the farmer was a planted cover up to mask the project and killers they created.

This is one of those movies where you have everything , the cast including Danielle Harris and all do a good job but sadly somewhere the script and a tight screenplay let them down. The director does a good job with creating some tension and atmosphere for a slasher, the make up and gore effects are excellent right through , but just something lacked here. I enjoyed the 2015 Redwood Massacre, this is not a direct sequel but has some connection to the previous movie. Don't go with the low ratings on IMDB, Watch it ,but you'll feel .. Oh this could've been much better.

So, I guess the high ratings is just because people like Danielle Harris? Me too, in Hatchet and the Halloweens. In this, not so much. Really the script was the issue. The burlap killer looks fantastic. Has a horror franchise look to him. I never saw the original Redwood movie, but we learn the 'team' in this one is haunted by the death of Harris' sister and the others killed so the father and a team of others have been looking for the killer and answers since. Ok, that's fine. Then, thud. For the life of me, can't understand how Harris's character is the 'leader' of the team hunting this killer. She's five feet tall and her only 'qualifications' we see is she does some boxing at the local gym and acts like she's tough. That's all you need, huh? Yet, everyone defers to her like she's the second coming of the Terminator, including her own father, and including some sort of combat vet with a giant bag of weapons who's easily twice her age. WTF? There's suspension of belief required in horror films, but this one was way over the line. Just makes the rest of the movie not work and neither does the fact that all the characters just don't act the way someone normal would based on the situation or what happens just before, whether that's something a person said or an event happens. The team drags along creepy superfan type guy who likes the dads book on the murders and pretty much spends the whole movie holding up a sign that says 'sketchy bad guy who will do something bad really soon'. They decide to investigate a military compound because it's 'one place they didn't search yet' because the dad was caught trespassing there in the past and got 10 days in jail. This is important, because they come up to the fence and the compound and he says something like 'I don't know exactly where it is, don't remember it looking like this, etc.'. Yet, that's the compound. YOU WERE THERE BEFORE AND GOT ARRESTED THERE! Seriously? Who wrote those lines? Lol. Anyway, do they send giant guy with a bajillion guns down into the underground compound to search it and maybe run into the killer who massacred bunches of people? No, five foot tall Harris and a flashlight, BY HERSELF, goes down because she said she was going down alone in a tough voice and ordered the others to stay up. LOL. Wow. Won't ruin the ending but will just say it veers into campy silliness that actually manages to top the poor script writing up to that point. Really too bad the characters were entirely unbelievable and the script was so poor, because the burlap killer really is the best looking potential horror villain I've seen in a long time. Two stars for burlap.

So, we're in Scotland investigating a Scottish serial killer. But everyone is American. One fella seems to only speak in marine movie clichés, one man looks like my hipster barber, one lass seems to make up the numbers and then we have the lead female who works as exposition for the poorly conceived and executed narrative.

Slow, ponderous and, if possible, even poorer than the first film. Although we at least got some brief sense that these characters had actually met each other before, unlike the first movie.

The only gleaming light in this movie is that my hipster barber seems a fairly decent actor. Why I have to supplement him with expensive beard trims and hair care, I'll never know.