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 Supposedly this is a "stylish, but even more brutal" sequel to Evil Dead Trap . There is some "possession and sexual obsession [that] lead[s] to a number of
gruesome slayings and eventually total madness." They also claim that there
are "state of the art sfx, superb photography and a great story." Uh,
something must have been left out of my DVD then. 1991, 95 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
Whoa Nellie! This one made my tumor, which had been in remission since The Beast Of Yucca Flats , act up in a big way! I actually had to stop this dang thing halfway through
and go and get some McDonald's supersize fries in an effort to feel sick to my
stomach so I wouldn't keep thinking about how much this movie was hurting my
head! I know that virtually anyone who has seen both this movie and its
shockingly superior sequel (shocking because it's difficult to believe that you
could say the first one was superior to anything) maintains that Evil Dead Trap
2 is a dreadful follow up. Since most of these people are the same ones that
heap warrantless praise on the first one, I naturally assumed that these people
were vapid fools regarding every opinion they wielded like some sort of special
ed name tag. In fact, despite the tidal wave of opinion against Evil Dead Trap
2, I was going into this affair with a good mindset - I was planning on playing
within myself, stepping up when I had to, not take anything for granted, and
generally approach this movie just like my high school cross country coach
would have wanted me to. As things began to unfold, I was delighted to see that the movie
was going to star a fat, ugly girl, because it was such a departure from the
usual disgusting Japanese slasher mayhem these types of films usually delivered
(skinny chicks getting skinned, chopped, poked, and gutted). I'll admit that I
was also hoping for some funny scenes of this tubby gal falling down a lot and
at least a few scenes where she eats lots of food (those always crack me up).
Well, we did get to see her at a meal, but it wasn't that funny and she did get
into a wrestling match with one of her friends, but that wasn't until the end
of the film, when I had already rolled off my couch unconscious from the pain
this one inflicted upon me. I actually thought about turning it off after an
hour, because I was so bored by it all. I was going to go ahead and write up
this review and figured no one would ever know that I hadn't really watched it.
But then I realized that I would know and I also knew that I would end up
bragging about it and probably be drummed out of my cult, I mean fundamentalist
church, so I decided that the best course of action would be to leave the movie
running, sit down in front of it, but have a copy of Entertainment Weekly on
standby so I could check during the movie's more excruciating parts, just how
good that submarine movie starring Indiana Jones is (turns out not so good -
never would have guessed that).  So what's the story with the fat chick and why was this movie the cinematic
equivalent of a first time dry fisting (huh?)? That's exactly the problem! I
had no idea what was going on and furthermore, it was all so poorly done, I
didn't care. What I was able to make out is that Aki is an obese film
projectionist that works in this movie theatre projecting movies or something.
Somehow (it was never established why) she is friends with this woman TV
reporter who used to be a popular singer, but is now covering a series of
killings that keep occurring near some abandoned shopping mall. Ahhh, the old
abandoned shopping mall! That, I understand! Actually, it isn't really
abandoned at all, it's just being refurbished, but some character speculated
that the shops went out of business because of all the killings. Sometimes at
work, Aki also sees a little boy in the movie theatre. His name is Hideki.
You may recall Hideki as the name of the little freak from the first movie that
sort of lived inside his homicidal brother and ran around killing people (or
was that his homicidal brother and Hideki was along for the ride?). As
confusing and stupid as the Hideki character was in the first movie, they
manage to take things to a whole new level in this one. Here, Hideki is some
type mean old ghost, but he seems to be haunting everyone in Osaka. There's
Aki who sees Hideki everywhere she goes. There's her good friend Ami who may
or may not be preggers with Hideki and then there is their mutual friend named
Kurashi or something. Kurashi is a married guy whose wife spends all her time
in a child's bedroom playing with his toys and telling her husband that Hideki
is going to come back sometime. It think it is obvious that we are supposed to
think that Hideki was their kid and that it died, causing the mother to go
nucking futs. That makes sense to me. What didn't make sense was that later
in the movie when he got back from banging either Aki or Ami, his wife says
that Hideki finally came home and Kurashi notices a pair of children's shoes
and sure enough there's that little Hideki bugger staring at him. That's all
well and good, but why is Aki having visions of him and why has Ami gone crazy
and started killing people once she became pregnant with Kurashi's child?  Maybe I should back up and explain all about the serial killing that Aki is
involved in (not the pregnant Ami) and the abortion she apparently had and the
strange cult she gets mixed up in. See, this is all starting to come together
like some big soupy, wormy crap pie. Ami and Aki have dinner and Ami
introduces Aki to Kurashi. He wants to bang the attractive Ami (and he does
later), but he spends most of his time putting the moves on the less than
conventionally attractive Aki. She constantly rebuffs him by shooting him sour
glances that only emphasize her chins and by pretty much ignoring him. He's
one of those guys that's about as likely to give up on trying to nail Aki as
Aki is likely to give up trying to nail an extra piece of pie. This is a very
dull relationship because these characters are so poorly drawn that you have no
idea why he is attracted to her and why he persists in trying to hump her. You
also have no earthly idea why she would turn him down or why her good looking
friend would hang out with such a downer of chick to begin with (especially
when her man keeps hitting on her). At some point in time after she turns this
guy down, Aki goes out and kills some other chick and guts her. She does this
to another girl later as well. You may think it is quite the nice little
coincidence that her friend is
the one to report on the murders , but it's about as
plausible as the fact that her reporter friend Ami gets all hot and
bothered by covering the murders. I was never sure what all that meant, but
luckily for me the manager of the movie theatre where Miss Piggy works comes to
the conclusion that Aki must have had an abortion at some time in her past and
that's why she's seeing boys who aren't really there. I thought it was nice
that she had an understanding employer that didn't put her on suspension when
she revealed that she was a whack job. Course he refers her to a cult that he
has some interest in, so I guess it's all a wash. I feel compelled to note
that he was featured once more in this film in the big "urinal cleaning" scene.
I don't know why I felt compelled to note that, but that was just one of the
stylish touches the back of the DVD must have been talking about. I can't
believe they didn't include some sort of toilet scrubbing scene in the first
one (and they say that's the good one!). 
Aki runs off to a cult meeting and there she meets the woman that leads things.
She is able to sense that there is some type of evil presence around Porky and
this means she needs to write all this stuff down on paper, like famed medium
George Anderson does with that stupid pad of paper and pen he scribbles with
when talking to dead folks that knew Grade Z celebrities like MacKenzie
Phillips (We want to hear from Mama Cass!). Laugh at George if you want, but
his
gig on ABC a few months back allowed him to meet a couple of MonsterHunter
idols in Bret "The Hitman" Hart and Vanna White. Aki leaves the cult after
awhile and I don't remember quite what happened next, but somehow or other Aki
and Ami had a dispute over abortions, pregnancy, and/or their stupid boyfriend
and it
all lead to a predictable knife fight. I will give it to this movie in that I
was giggling when big nasty Aki rolls into Ami's house to cut her up with her
trusty pinking shears (the ones she used on a couple of skanks earlier). Any
regularly sucky movie would have had Aki either kill Ami or have Ami fend her
off and escape or kill her in self-defense. Evil Dead Trap 2? Ami has gone nuts herself and has taken to dismembering guys with a box
cutter! If you've never seen two crazy, serial killer broads with blades go
toe to toe, then this would be the high point of the movie for you. Aki thinks
that she's top of the heap (you know how serial killers are) and is just going
to come in to Ami's crib and gut her like the other skanks. Imagine her
surprise when Ami bust out the box cutter on her and slashes her face and arms.
Lots of pushing and shoving and tackling ensue with Aki escaping with her life
only by pushing Ami into her bathtub which is full of some dude's arms, legs,
and head. I think Ami was babbling about how her baby needed nourishment (or
was that during their return knifefight at the shopping mall five minutes
later?). No matter, because the movie has moved on to the movie theatre where
Aki hooks up with Kurashi and makes out with him. That goes straight into the
crapper once he starts ripping her wounds open, calling himself a child
(Hideki?) and tormenting her until she's lying on the ground crying as he pours
a beverage on her head. Not sure what was going on there, but the next stop is
the grudge match at the shopping mall. Before I forget, Aki had time between knife fights, getting tortured by her
boyfriend, and eating, to visit the cult leader in the hospital. She was dying,
but had the strength to hold a knife to Aki's throat and run her stupid yap
about nothing anyone with a tumor in his dang head cared about. Anyway, the
final confrontation is upon us. Since they already played this scene out five
minutes before in Ami's apartment, they change it up a bit, by making this one
slow motion. The highlights are as follows: Ami gets her arm broke so she
cuts it off herself and feeds it down a drain to her baby (or something), Aki
gets herself trapped on an operating table and thinks that Kurashi is doing
something to her nether regions with some type of instrument that looks like an
airbrush or something, but then wakes up and realizes she was hallucinating
because it'd been two hours since she last stopped at Taco Bell, Aki and Ami
have one more final showdown where they both fall down a hole into a bunch of
water. Ami has her baby here and out pops a fully grown beautiful Kurashi!
Aki takes this opportunity to bash him in the head with pipe. Then she watches
as Hideki pops up from under the water (Glad you could make it!). Wowie, was
this a doozy! Some have called it surreal, but the only thing surreal about
any of this is that I paid money to not just watch this, not just to rent this,
but to own this! I don't get to leave the theatre early, I don't get to take
it back to the Video Pit and demand my money back. I am just a dumb hick stuck
with quite possibly the most piss-poor film of our or any time. If you read
all of this and thought that I must have been on quaaludes and just made up
whatever popped into my stream of unconsciousness, you would be right, except
that I simply reported what I observed in this gargantuan fiasco. I don't
think I can recall the last time ideas were this badly communicated outside of
a regular art film (like Fando & Lis) or a speech by W. himself. I guess this
all revolved that evil little brat Hideki and the bad influence he had on these
people, but why? What was his beef with all these people? Aki was haunted by
an abortion, Kurashi was haunted by the death of a child and Ami was turned on
by it all. At least I think that's kind of what was happening, but why did
Hideki's ghost care? And how did he get out of that abandoned warehouse from Evil Dead Trap? Aaaarghhh! My tumor is pressing down on my optic nerve again
and all I see are spots! Japan Shock, you've done it again! When can we
expect Evil Dead Trap 3: Broken Love Killer? (Oh, and you better believe there was one!)
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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