Return to Horror Hotel

A relatively low budget anthology of four fun and gruesome stories, directed by Ricky Hess and Brandon Thaxton, based around events at the same Horror Hotel, including:

Sleep Tight, Guillotine, No Time for Love and Houdini's Hand.

The acting isn't amazing in Return to Horror Hotel, although all actors tackled their roles with enthusiasm (Baby Norman, J Michael Grey, R. C. Sayyah, Stephanie Stevens, Montrel Miller, among others).

I found that the stories were funny, and could sit somewhere between The Twilight Zone and earlier Supernatural stand-alone episodes.

I enjoyed them and they all had a moral to the story, like macabre fables.

A complete waste of time, yes. However, at least it was short. I don't know about the original, but 'Return to Horror Hotel' is nothing but a cheap knockoff of a Full Moon production or a Troma film without any of the cult movie charm. This movie fails so hard that it's actually kind of funny in some areas. Still, no excuse for bad acting and unoriginality. I recommend staying away from this one, as well as the first movie. From first impressions alone, I imagine that the first 'Horror Hotel' is just as terrible, if not worse than this travesty.

A collection of short films set generally in motel packaged together into a feature-length anthology.

This here was a truly terrible anthology effort. This is mostly due to the scattershot approach where it's impossible to tell what's going on here. Rather than present a clear, well-defined focus to the stories and what's going on, this one whips us around chaotically and without warning to these random people coming to a random motel that you can't tell if its set at the same one or just motels in general in a way that never allows for much in the way of competent storytelling. There's nothing about who these people are or what they're doing before coming to the motel or a motel or what the different thematic stories come from.

There's also the problematic issue in the technical merits of some of the shorts never appearing to get together in a cohesive whole. That there's plenty of transitions showing each of the segments being chopped down with the same fade-to-black, fade-in setups that are haphazardly edited together which makes for a cheap-looking effort. That carries over into the overall presentation where this completely misses out on editing out the opening credits from the shorts, looking exactly like these were gathered together and given the introductions to sell the format. Even without the wraparound sections that give this one a point and purpose, the presentation and production really undo this one significantly.

The chosen shorts here are also exceptionally bad. The first segment "Sleep Tight" has a creepy premise and some chilling imagery about the gnawed-on bodies featuring some great gore, but is so scattershot to pay off as the shift in focus to the various people at the motel are so episodic in nature it's hard to tell what they're here for. The second one, "Guillotine" is predictable, underdeveloped and not scary at all with no horror payoff to anything that happens. "No Time for Love" has a somewhat dark twist but doesn't go anywhere close to horror until then with a half-crocked love story taking up the running time. Finally, "Houdini's Hand" has a great premise involving the stolen hand coming to life but its way too clichéd and doesn't offer up any kind of surprise.

The few positives here are related to a few select areas in the general setup for each of the stories. Having a motel infested with carnivorous bed-bugs that comes for a family staying there could've been fun as this has a great setup, while a woman fighting over a special charm is a decent enough effort. A cursed motel room that ages inhabitants are various intervals could've been a blast s is the idea of a disembodied hand running amuck in a hotel room which means this has some great setups in theory. As there are no real flaws in the production of these shorts as they all look incredibly professional, it's what works here but gets washed out by the massive flaws on display.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

Nope. the acting was so bad in this i wanted to scoop my eyes out with a melon baller.

These stories may have been great if they weren't destroyed by the poor acting.