Demons 2

Shock Block

Demons 2
aka Dèmoni 2... l'incubo ritorna
Italy 1986
Directed by Lamberto Bava
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Okay... this really is going to be a short review. When I revisited the first Demons on Blu Ray recently (reviewed here), as part of Arrow’s excellent double bill collection of the films, I was somewhat disappointed with it not living up to my memories of a better film. However, since I was very much let down by the sequel when I first saw it (20 or more years ago), I figured that my tastes may have changed and I’d maybe get more out of Demons 2 on a second look. Alas, I can confirm that Demons 2 is... well... it does still make the first film look pretty good. It’s a lousy sequel with not a whole lot going for it, it has to be said.

One of the nicer things about it is the concept. In the first movie we had the people in the first film in a cinema watching a horror story which suddenly became a parallel for the customers suddenly getting infected by a demon virus themselves. In this movie, it’s almost completely set within an apartment block, late one evening when most of the people living there are tuned into a similar horror movie on their TV. This one has a demon from the movie pushing itself out of the TV screen of one of the characters and infecting her, unleashing the demon virus into the tower block. And that’s that... another simple story of survival horror (or non-survival, as the case may be) and there’s not a heck of a lot of fun to be found in the various twists and turns.

There are a few nice things and points of interest I can briefly mention here though.

For example, the resurrection of the demon from a corpse in the movie within the movie is a simple effect but executed brilliantly so it looks great. There’s another nice special effect moments later where a dog is transformed into a demon and that’s not handled badly at all (perhaps inspired by the John Carpenter remake of The Thing, reviewed here, although obviously not in the same league). And talking about... ‘inspired by’... there’s a sequence where a demonic kid is running around chasing a pregnant woman but then he starts writhing around himself in a kind of parody of John Hurt’s character from A L I E N. Yep, there’s a chest burster parody here as the demon boy gives birth to... something not entirely unlike the title creatures of the movie Gremlins, to be honest. So two references for the price of one there. Plus, a nice moment when the bloody knife seen at the start of the movie turns out to be dripping with jam in a patisserie shop. A nice but minor piece of visual rug pulling.

There’s a lot of bad things in the movie too. There are a few actors back from the first one in different roles but, it has to be said that, in general the acting in this movie is not a high point. It’s also the film debut of a very young Asia Argento (she was around 11 years old when this film was released in cinemas) but she’s kind of wasted in this and doesn’t seem to do much at all... bizarrely dropping out of the fillm towards the end with no real clue for the audience as to her fate... as she hides in a car in the underground car park where a lot of the short lived survivors fight their last stand.

Added to this, there are a few moments at various intervals in the movie where it takes the parts that were practically unwatchable in the last film, a bunch of teens driving around the city very fast playing rock music... and repeats it with another bunch of unlikable teens who, this time around, don’t go anywhere close to catching up with the rest of the plot. In fact, there are quite a few scenes in this movie where it feels like other sequences were planned but then never shot. And goodness knows why two of the main exterior shots are completely out of focus. Why were they even left in the film? The budget obviously didn’t cover reshoots I guess.

Other than that, the only really good thing about the movie is the music. And I don’t mean the bunch of ‘hard to listen to’ pop songs which clutter up the soundtrack, especially when the teens are driving around the city. I’m talking about young, up and coming composer Simon Boswell’s score, which supports this mess of a movie when it can but, I can tell you that the CD soundtrack of his Demons 2 score is much more interesting as a stand alone listen. It’s a mostly different kind of vibe to Claudio Simonetti’s driven score to the first film. It does share some similar ‘orchestration’ of the electronics at certain points but it definitely sounds like Boswell’s distinctive musical signature on the score, for sure.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say on this one. Demons 2 is not a movie I would recommend to anyone. If you want to see a decent, virally violent group of people slicing and dicing their way through an apartment block then David Croneneberg’s Shivers (reviewed here) would be the film to watch. That one was made 11 years before Demons 2 but is a far superior movie and much more potent than this mess of a sequel, for sure. I know some people love this film but... yeah... this one is just not for me.