I heard about this movie few months back but since it did not get a lot of attention and publicity, I completely forgotten about it until few weeks ago when I saw its trailer in theater. As I quite enjoyed the original movie, I definitely wanted to see the sequel. Lucky for me and my wife that it played in the theater nearest to my home at 7.15 PM so I had plenty of time to go back home and be ready without rush. Well, we should go on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Story was set in a small town of Wardenclyffe where a high school student named Sarah (Madison Iseman - Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Still the King TV series etc) was in her last year of school and could not wait to get to college. Sarah and her younger brother Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor - IT etc) were living with their mother Kathy (Wendi McLendon-Covey - Bridesmaids, The Goldbergs TV series etc). One day before Halloween, Sonny and his best friend Sam (Caleel Harris) came across an unfinished book which later on revealed to be written by R. L. Stine (Jack Black - The House with a Clock in Its Wall, School of Rock etc).
When they opened the book, unbeknownst to them it actually released an evil ventriloquist dummy named Slappy (voiced by Mick Wingert) and brought it to life. Things became really bad for Sonny, Sam and Sarah when Slappy seemed to have his own agenda to get revenge and tried to bring all supernatural monsters from Stine's books to life. With the help from their neighbor Mr. Chu (Ken Jeong - Crazy Rich Asians, Dr. Ken TV series etc), the three of them had to stop Slappy's evil plan.
End of Brief Story Line
OK, this movie was a bit different from what I expected. To the best of my recollection, the first movie (which I saw on cable TV) was a bit more drama and the characters were a bit older than these 3 lead cast here, plus it had a rather emotional ending. However, this one felt so much lighter, had lots of funny (sometimes a bit cheesy and not the most original ones, but entertaining nonetheless) moments and the evil character was creepy but not terrifying enough.
This movie had sufficient amusing scenes especially when involving Sonny and Sam as the kids who seemed to be the typed commonly being bullied around in school in lots of movies but later on became the "savior". Jeremy Ray Taylor and Caleel Harris were spot on portraying those kids while Madison Iseman was OK as the caring older sister. I also loved the fact that the actors & actresses playing the high school students in here looked young enough to convince us they were really teenagers. The main cast of the movie were those 3 kids, while the adults were more of the supporting cast. Ken Jeong did not have so much screen time, but he did provide some amusing scenes when he showed up. As for Wendi McLendon-Covey (whom my wife recognized as the neighbor in one of her favorite comedy TV series Rules of Engagement) was just so so.
The special effects here were awesome to my opinion. Those scenes when the monsters came to live were amazingly done. And of course the effects of making Slappy alive were impressive, especially with the addition of his evil laughter (I thought Mick Wingert did his job brilliantly). The sound effects were surprisingly great for a common Dolby surround system in our theater. And I thought the audience in the theater including kids and my wife were also entertained by the movie. Yes, the film was classified as PG in the US, while in Indonesia it was rated for 13+ (maybe due to few jump scares scenes).
I mentioned above that this film was having different tone with its predecessor. So I am guessing that fans of the original movie may or may not like this sequel. If they were expecting for something really similar, perhaps they would not be appreciative of such changes, especially if they wanted to see Jack Black playing huge role. But this one had significant amount of monsters from R. L. Stine's books as well like the abominable snowman, or the werewolf and so on. As for me, I was quite entertained throughout the movie and did have some fun laughing or at least grinning. Oh this movie had a rather predictable ending and again I really sensed the movie was aimed for younger audience (kids to be exact) so be ready with the feeling of seeing a bit of kids movie, despite the genre of horror comedy.
Overall, it was a fun experience, quite entertaining movie of around 90 minutes including end credit. My wife and I waited for end credit to complete and it give very brief funny thing that was just for fun, but not something that audience would lose their mind if they missed it. My wife and I quite enjoyed it, but if I had to compare with the first movie, I like that one better as it felt more memorable. If you are looking for some light horror comedy movie and have no objection with the young-ish plot, then you can certainly see this. But if you prefer the scary horror movie or wanted to experience smart adult comedy, then this one may not be for you. The choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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