Review of Dark Woods II

Dark Woods II (2015)
5/10
Lacking emotional connection. Things happen and then it's over.
9 November 2015
I was lucky enough to catch an outdoor screening of this in the Norwegian woods. Sadly, despite the name of the movie, it's not really much about the woods this time around.

In this movie a crew of people are doing tests and gathering samples of an old asylum/hospital that is to be torn down. The big building is in the middle of nowhere, as it was built for avoiding the spread of tuberculosis. The janitor who has been in charge of the place is a bit difficult to work with, and therein starts the movie's conflict.

I actually liked the way that it tied into the first Villmark movie. It's only indirectly, but it's enough so that you get a bit extra from this movie if you have seen the first one. On the surface there's the fact that the hospital uses the lake from the first movie as its water supply, and that the janitor in this movie appears also in Villmark. But they also refer a bit to the WW2-history that is mentioned in the first movie.

The make up (or SFX?) in this movie were also quite nice, though I won't go into further details because of spoilers.

Now, did I like this movie? No. It does a lot of things correctly, like the setting and the make up, as mentioned. However, unlike the first movie, you barley get to know any of the characters, so when things start happening, you don't really care. There are some jump scare, but the movie doesn't really manage to build much tension. An emotional bond with the character's would have helped immensely, but the movie's attempt to give you brief glimpses into who these guys are, fails miserably. There's also a lot of poor/strange decisions (like in many horror movies).

I hated the ending of the previous film, but this movie's ending is actually alright.
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