There is a joke in A HAUNTED HOUSE 2 where Marlon Wayans
comments about how bad the SCARY MOVIE series is without the involvement of the
Wayans brothers. If their involvement would result in something like this movie
I don't think it would help and could possibly make that series even worse. As
it stands this movie is one of the worst I've seen when it comes to parody
films. Even the involvement of one Wayans brother harms more than helps.
Story wise we have Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) still plagued by
evil spirits. While the possessed girl friend of the first film has died,
Malcolm now has a new family in the form of girlfriend Megan (Jamie Presley)
and her two children. Here we get parodies of several recent horror films as
the daughter falls prey to a demon filled box (ala SAM
RAIMI'S THE POSSESSION) while Malcolm finds himself involved with a doll that's
pure evil (ala THE CONJURING). Malcolm once again finds himself in a house that
is haunted and has to recruit help in taking out the demons.
The problem is there is so little that is funny in this film
that I kept thinking to myself isn't this supposed to be a comedy? Thinking
back I counted the number of times I actually laughed or even smiled while
watching it and I could count that number on one hand not using my thumb in the
process. The worst thing about the movie was that Wayans made the poor choice
to take what could have been a decent joke on several occasion and beat the
joke to death like the proverbial dead horse until the original joke was
forgotten, replaced by the repetitive joke it became. First joke, funny. Making
that joke last 30 seconds to 2 minutes? Boring. As the joke carried on and on
and on it made me long to press down the fast forward button in the hopes it
would end. Instead I held fast and was rewarded with more and more unfunny
moments.
Looking back on watching this movie I couldn't find anything
to praise about it. I just kept thinking that it was like torture watching it
from start to finish. It was also sad. Knowing that Wayans can be a good actor
from past films he's been in and a good writer as seen in many films he's
helped with it disturbed me to think he thought this was up to par with those
films in the past. Had I written this film I would have been ashamed to attach
my name to it. I have to think he was surrounded by yes men telling him that
everything he did, said or wrote down was funny. When you surround yourself
with people like that you can't do your best work. It would have been better to
stock those around you with people telling you that yes emperor, you aren't
wearing any clothes.
While there have been a number of parodies by people
involved with the SCARY MOVIE franchise that have been terrible enough to make
me steer clear of any film whose advertising states that writers involved in
that first film have made this new one, I now have to add Wayans name to that
list. This film is as bad as a number of those films, movies like EPIC
MOVIE and MEET THE SPARTANS. In no way would I want this film to be added to my
collection for fear that it might infect other films with how bad it is. Many
people these days trade movies they get after discovering how much they don't
enjoy it. I would say that anyone choosing to do so risk the chance of doing
harm to anyone who would pick up even a used copy of this film. If word of
mouth does anything it will cause this film to languish on the shelf in an
overabundance of used copies. Yes, it really is that bad.
Click here to order.
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