Having only ever been dissapointed by the original ‘Killjoy’, I decided i’d wasted enough time watching half decent flicks and decided to check out the sequel ‘Killjoy 2’…That and apparently everything AFTER this movie is very tonally different, and having gone through all the ‘Evil Bong’ movies a short time ago, I figured I might as well check out these 5 because theres quite a bit of overlap between the latter day ‘Killjoy’ movies and the ‘Evil Bong’ series.

This however, was basically a blockade stopping me from getting straight to the tonally different stuff. Produced in 2002, its treated as a sequel to the original ‘Killjoy’ but honestly? if I had to sum this thing up as a vibe, it feels like someones inserted a Troma or 90s Seban entertainment villain into a 100% straight slasher movie.

The plot follows a group of convicts who are on a prison transfer when their van breaks down in the middle of nowhere, theres a brief altercation with a woman with a shotgun, and the gang decide its best to set up camp for the night and carry on in the morning. While out there though they encounter a group who recount the plot of the first ‘Killjoy’ film, do an encantation and BAM, Killjoys back…50 minutes in to this 90 minute movie.

And thats the big problem with this thing. Script wise, its such a nothing production, you have 50(ish) minutes of convicts wandering around a desert roadway talking about pointless plot points that dont really come up again, Then Killjoy turns up at the 50 minute mark, basically doing very ungory goofy kills for 30 minutes intercut with more boring talking sequences.

I mean, I didnt enjoy the first film at all, but at least it TRIED to give us an interesting plot. At least it TRIED to create and interesting character, the whole ‘guy gets possessed by a demon and goes on a revenge filled killing spree picking off people who wronged him’ wasnt exactly original…But it gave the characters some motication, it gave ‘Killjoy’ a bit of nuance and character depth beyond just ‘killer clown’

Here? thats all he is. Its assumed he’s just a demon entity at the minute (not possessing anyone) because the depth of the possessed character taking over ‘Killjoys’ plans is entirely gone, and instead we end up with basically Tim Currys take on ‘Pennywise’ from ‘IT’ by way of Lloyd Kaufman.

The actual script is slowburn, uninteresting and largely crawling, the tone is jarring contrasting comedy style deaths with a completley straight cut early 2000’s stylisation of narrative. The plots dissatisfying and doesnt really go anywhere and the resolution, for a 90 minute feature, is very dissapointing.

The direction and cine are *mostly* a step up across the board. I should note that, given this is a flagship title in Full Moons repetoir, they’ve HORRENDOUSLY mistreated their streaming copies of ‘Killjoy’ 1 and 2. The first one was cropped into 4:3, compressed to hell and consistently had an inconsistent framerate (the thing would randomly slow down and speed up for seemingly no reason)

Here? Well, they’ve at least got it in widescreen…AND it looks a lot more filmic (it doesnt feel like someones ‘end of college year’ film… AND they’ve bothered to use B-roll and cutaway footage. but its still compressed to the point that people faces just become pixellated smears in mid shots and the frame rate problem is now constant through the entire film. I had to change the speed in which the film was playing to 1.5x faster than it was uploaded as because otherwise everyone sounded like they were on an Ambien trip.

I do miss the colour and flare that was present in the first one, this is basically blacks, blues, oranges and browns…with only ‘Killjoys’ outfit adding any kind of multicolour flare to proceedings. It looks kind of drab, but they DO utilise decent depth of field, they do build the scenes appropriately and pace out cuts decently for the most part.

And while the compositions arnt anything to write home about, pound for pound they’re WAY better than the original and do feel more professional as a result.

The Performances across the board are dull. Even ‘Killjoy’ the literal goofy clown killing demon barely gets to do anything even remotely bombastic. Instead he’s reduced to giggling creepily, saying weird one liners and AT MOST we get to see him do a kind of goofy waddle around. Non of the other cast bring any kind of energy to the role, theres no sense of surprise, shock or interest from our characters about anything thats going on and they largely stick to cue points and staying still over any kind of interaction with their set…its kind of depressing honestly.

Oh! and I think they largely reuse the soundtrak from the first film as well…ugh.

By a hairs breadth this thing *JUST* about manages to improve on the original, not in the sense that it tries to do anything more interesting or out there. But in the sense that it manages to maintain SOMETHING of a consistency throughout, while minorly improving everything barring the plotting across the board.

The first one was much more interesting, but way too erratic on being good in my opinion. This thing is just consistently fine, but a bit dull. and I think i’d rather consistent than a film thats 40 minutes of ‘fine-ness’ and 40 minutes of wanting to do anything other than watch it.

So far? I cant recommend this or the original. But I hear things change drastically from here on in…I can hope…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/killjoy-2-deliverance-from-evil/