Extro II - O Reencontro

The original Xtro was a British sci-fi horror film from the early 80's. It was very silly indeed but pretty original and strange. I guess you could describe it as a minor cult movie. Its director, Harry Davenport, returned almost a decade later to make an American sequel called, perhaps unsurprisingly, Xtro II. This one is only vaguely related to the previous film at best. It's set in an underground military laboratory that is experimenting with travelling to other dimensions. They send a swat team to one such place, it's disastrous and one of the team returns only for an aggressive alien to burst out of her stomach and escape into the facility. The remaining personnel must avoid being torn apart by the monster.

It should be clear from the synopsis that this flick owes a fair bit to Alien. But the truth is that this one isn't even nearly as good as the uneven original Xtro, far less Ridley Scott's master-work. Probably the single biggest problem is the location. Almost all films set in confined military bases are usually tedious and terrible. The limited sets are good for a low budget but very boring. This one is no exception with lots of dark corridors and very little variety. The movie stars Jan-Michael 'Airwolf' Vincent. He's not very good and puts in a thoroughly disinterested performance.

Overall, very forgettable.

I recently watched Xtro 2 (1991) on YouTube. The story follows a group of scientists working in an underground bunker who build a teleportation device to access another dimension. But once they open the portal, they have no idea what's waiting on the other side-or what might come through into our world... and they're about to find out.

Directed by Harry Bromley Davenport (Xtro), the film stars Jan-Michael Vincent (The Mechanic), Rachel Hayward (Cruel and Unusual), Paul Koslo (The Omega Man), and Tara Buckman (Silent Night, Deadly Night).

This sequel is a letdown. It feels like a made-for-TV movie and plays like a low-budget Aliens knockoff. The dialogue is stiff, the acting unconvincing, and the horror elements are weak-aside from a few decent corpse effects. The setting is passable for the story, but overall, there's nothing particularly memorable or original here.

I'd give this a 3/10 and recommend skipping it.

Now I think that I can appreciate a movie if it doesn't have brilliant sets brilliant actors or even a brilliant plot. But this film? No way! It was dull it was pointless it was a rip off of alien for the first part then Aliens for the second. Also it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the first film Xtro, I am guessing they just called it Xtro II to try and get some people to buy it, and I am one of those people. The acting is awful the characters are lame the sets are not very complicated if you know what I mean, the special effects are not that special although the alien actually is passable as a fun monster if not a realistic one. Now this is full of cliches but where as Cyborg Cop seems to know it's using cliches and relishes in the fun this movie takes itself completely seriously, the only part where it started getting interesting was near the end but that was only getting upto a 2 or 3 on the excitometer. All in all a bad film, Paul Koslo was much better as the evil Russian counterpart in Robot Jox, here he is just plain wooden. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone except maybe if you put together a short five minute movie of the edited highlights. A waste of time. 2/10

A watchable yet highly derivative work with a good-bad ratio that about balances the scales.

There's absolutely no point in bellyaching about its sequel-ship as proceeding Xtro from ten years prior because it is public record that a sequel couldn't be made unless it was in name only due to legal issues. I for one had enough of Xtro the first time around so it's no tragedy to me that this film had nothing to do with it.

Unlike its predecessor this film can't be mined for archetypal meaning. It is devoid of any depth, if I do say so myself.

Forget about Alien; Xtro 2 is a poor man's remake of "Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor" from 1990; another sequel that had nothing to do with its weird and disgusting older sibling.

But of course we can't forget about the impact of Alien on this film. The shots of the parallel dimension are almost identical (at a glance) to what we see on the monitors in front of an electrified Ash as Dallas, Lambert and Kane explore LV24. Then we have the entrance of the monster (I like the unzipping effect in Xtro 2, though).

Aesthetically this film is like a graphic novel set in the dark. It's quite impressive how they managed to get so much black in the background that all we see for the most part are the cast, creature, and the artefact of interest (a ripped grate, for example). I also appreciated that Jedburg was there at the bottom of the elevator shaft, as he should have been.

As I said: watchable, highly derivative, decent monster, aesthetically minimalist. A cultural summation rather than contribution. You know what you're getting.

Xtro, the original movie, was a British production involving an abducted father who comes back for his son, transforming him into an alien like himself and raising Hell for his ex-wife and friends.

This movie has nothing even resembling anything like that, with the exception of the director.

It is a bad sign when a movie sequel manages to forget some of what happened in the previous movie. It is a terrible sign when it completely ignores every thing like the plot, characters, situations, et al.

Even worse is when you hire Jan Michael Vincent at the height of his addiction phase, when he was on the verge of getting bounced from Airwolf for his drunken antics. His underwhelming presence in this film is a great display of the depths he had sunken to already.