Stake Land II

This sequel picks of the story of Martin, at least a few years after the first film, where 'following yet another great tragedy in his short life, he seeks to find "Mister" again, the man who had taken him in as a teenager and taught him how to fight vampires and take care of himself. Martin begins this new journey through mostly desolate regions where it's as dangerous to trust an "unturned" human, as it is to fight the ravenous undead.

This time around, the character Martin had a little more grit, depth and emotion, but I was still rather underwhelmed. Not terribly so, in that you can understand the "shellshock" due to his great personal losses, and hence a kind of detachment regarding anything except fighting and killing. "Mister", the unnamed aging vampire fighter played by Nick Damici, the writer of the story, is as intense and believable as ever, and the best part about the film in my opinion. Some old friends of "Mister" provide more backstory of his history, which content is not unexpected but welcome, and eventually influences the ending of the tale at this time.

There's a fair amount of blood and gore, a couple of surprises, and a revenge element that connects both of the main characters, as the necessity and burden of fighting for survival nearly becomes too much for each. I rated it a 7 mostly on Damici's performance, as the storyline is typical for post-apocalyptic vampire/undead movies, and the cinematography was pretty good. It's definitely worth a watch if you liked the first film, and you wanted to see what happened to Martin and "Mister".