Moving on if not exactly moving up with Andreas Schnaas, Violent Sh!t 2 deals with the adventures of Karl Jr., son and heir of K. The Butcher Sh!tter from part 1. In the first few scenes there's the faintest sign that Schnaas has even made fairly radical advances, there's an ineptly choreographed but competently lensed fight scene following the breakdown of a drug deal, a couple of stylish dusky silhouette shots, even mild excitement. Even more far out though is the detour the film then takes into Hamburg, for a few moments it looks as if this one might actually have a plot, and more than one location! But no worries, its not too long before the film settles back into a comfortable rut of Karl Jr. in a forest, killing everyone he meets. Campers, joggers, fisherman, campers, construction workers, more campers, no one can escape Karl and his big cleaver or sometimes his gun or hook. His mom also gets a bit of screen time, weird old crone who considerably ups the discomfort and perversion factor (no prizes for guessing what sort of things go down). Basically the standard sequel template is followed, same plot, higher bodycount, more protracted scenes of slaughter, added perversion, nudity and even intentional humour. All this and the most egregious stylistic tics of the original are largely toned down, whilst there are still a fair few jumpy edits, daft freeze frames or fade outs and various other silliness on the whole things are much more controlled and in the end as with the beginning even stylish and a wee bit exciting. For all that things have come on though, I can't say as I found this one as charming an experience as the first. A large part of this was probably down to watching a subtitle free print, and since my knowledge of German is pretty limited the dialogue with all its potential smarts and subtleties passed me by. OK I wasn't expecting smarts or subtleties, that was a lie. But I'm sure it was funny, and extremely silly, and all the other good things. I didn't exactly have problems following the plot, but the repetitive, set-up kill, set-up kill structure becomes a lot less interesting when you don't know what anyone is saying, even a two minute appearance just to get slaughtered can be fun if the audience knows what you are saying, not so much here. More particular to the film, it was shorter and had more padding than the original, never a good sign. And on a basic level, this sort of thing works best as a one off. Its nice to see Karl becoming a truly epic villain, but it would even nicer to see more of the spectacle and variety that come little but in the finale here. Still, this is a watchable time waster with lots of cheap dismemberment, disembowelment and all the things you want to see, including some nasty genital abuse to make you squirm. Worth watching if you have too, but mainly for die hards only I'd say.
Review of Violent Shit II
