In a Northern California mountain town, Nina (Rosalind Allen) raises her adoptive infant son Tyler (Devin Sims) after her husband left her with her younger brother Danny (Jay Underwood) now living with and helping out her. As Tyler is prone to prolonged fits of crying with no way of soothing him, she takes him to various different doctors trying to understand what the underlying issue is until she meets Dr. Max Schrek (Michael Praed) who is able to sooth Tyler's cries and also strikes up a relationship with Nina unaware he is in fact vampire Vlad Tepes and the father of her child.
Son of Darkness: To Die For II is the sequel to the original To Die For produced by Greg Sims and written by Leslie King both of whom return for this sequel. Made for the emerging direct-to-video market of the 90s, the film calls upon some flimsy logic to justify continuation (wholesale ignoring aspects of the events of the first film) and also recasts Vlad Tepes while also writing out Sydney Walsh's Kate. While the central concept of a vampire-human hybrid seems like an interesting route, the film largely puts this plotpoint in the background so it can more or less follow the same points as the first film.
While Michael Praed and Rosalind Allen are fine as Max/Vlad and Nina respectively, the movie really doesn't get the same opportunity to create that same chemistry from the last film despite it's best efforts with the lingering questions of how Vlad is even still alive let alone Tom and Cellia from the last film with the explanation they go with not holding any water especially considering the first film's ending made it impossible. The filmmaking is perfectly serviceable for a direct-to-video film and there's some enjoyable kills and sequences in the film courtesy of the returning John Carl Buechler, but it just doesn't work as well as the first one did because there isn't as much care grafted onto the material.
Son of Darkness: To Die For II is perfectly watchable, but it's also unexceptional as it doesn't really do anything new and largely leaves new developments like Vlad's half vampire son in the background without much to do (maybe they were saving that for an unmade To Die For III, who knows?). The performances are at least energized with some nice hammy deliveries, so it's a reasonably enjoyable type of bad even if not a particularly memorable one.
