Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 7:2	Budget Medium

This is part two of a three part discussion on this movie, the original and a compare/contrast of the two.

This oddly named sequel starts out with a kid spying on a couple of his friends making out. After an earthquake they discover a "hidden" cave and some treasure. After straining mightily they manage to pull a sword out of the ground which unleashes a mysterious wind. Shortly after this the two guys are killed while the girl runs away. Unfortunately for her, she does not make it very far. Meanwhile, in an Insane Asylum where the final girl from the last movie has been incarcerated, the plot thickens. For some reason no one believes her that an invisible monster killed off the rest of her party. She still has nightmares, but now she is dreaming of new deaths. Kate is played by Megan Molloy in the sequel. None of the original cast return, but then most of them got killed in the first movie so I guess that is not much of a surprise. At any rate the Feds show up again to ask her about the cave. Soon they are all on their way to the cave with a group of mercenaries including Phoebe Dollar as Phoebe. Lorenzo Llamas (Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus) and Priscilla Barnes spend some time filling us in on the backstory. As Lorenzo walks away, the camera pulls back to reveal a monster on a table behind a glass wall. How Lorenzo could miss this, I have no idea.

Soon, final girl leads the mercenaries to the cave where they start dying. Meanwhile back at the office, Priscilla is poking the dead alien wondering why rigor mortis has not set in yet. Needless to say, the monster was only playing dead. It grabs her like a puppet and provides some more details to Lorenzo including something about waiting 300 years for the others to return at which time they would kill all the stupid humans. Lorenzo then hops in a helicopter to go to the aid of the mercenaries who were "in over their heads". As their helicopter gets close to the cave, the monster jumps out of a tree and lands on the copter causing it to crash. Lorenzo and his partner jump out before the crash and quickly find the cave and arm themselves with swords, which prove useless against the monster. Eventually the monster has killed everyone but final girl and Phoebe. In her death throes, Phoebe manages to stuff a grenade up the monster's thorax and blows it to bits. Just when it looks like final girl would make it through again, spaceships land and lots more monsters appear.

The movie makes extensive use of both CGI, models and forced perspective. The CGI stuff looks mostly okay but the monster often looks like the imps from the original Doom video game. The model work and forced perspective are done just good enough that if you don't look too closely you might be willing to let it slide. But what fun is that? Let's take a closer look, shall we?

The full size stuff all looks okay but you never for an instant think the monster is anything other than a guy in a rubber suit.

The death scene of Phoebe.'s boyfriend is priceless. We are down the last three survivors; Phoebe., her boyfriend and, of course, final girl. The monster is chasing the truck and Phoebe. is throwing sticks of dynamite at it with little effect. Somehow the gold falls out of the truck and they stop to retrieve it. We then see the truck stopped and the gold about 10 feet behind it. Good reflexes! Anyway the boyfriend yells "get the gold" and Phoebe jumps out to get it (which is almost understandable) and so does final girl (which makes no sense as she seems more interested in living that getting the treasure). So the girls get the gold and throw it in the back of the truck only to have the boyfriend drive away without them. We see the boyfriend drive around a couple of corners with the monster chasing him. Then we cut to the girls for a reaction shoot. Then back to the monster attacking the boyfriend and back to the girls for another reaction shot. Next the truck drives over a cliff and starts to fall and then back to the girls for another reaction shot. The truck continues to fall eventually hitting the ground and we go back to the girls for yet another reaction shot. The truck would have been out of sight in about ten seconds and still the girls react to four different events they could not possibly have seen including the truck hitting the ground after falling off a 1000 foot cliff. The scene actually plays out better with the reaction shots because the special effects are not that special, but still at some point the audience is going to notice.

There is an old saying "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight". This means be prepared, don't get into a situation where you start at a disadvantage. Why on Earth our heroes would bring handguns and shotguns is beyond me. Why they would continue to use them after seeing the monster shrug off point blank body shots makes less sense. And why would they lug along something that looks like a bazooka that only fires paint canisters. And they dragged along the paint canisters as well.

In what is one of the film's more interesting bits, final girl senses the monster's presence and throws sand on it to briefly outline it. Odd that it does not look like the right monster. More on that in Part Three. Still this is solid B movie fare. The plot is stupid. The special effects are just about good enough to not make you giggle too much. There is not much to recommend this film other than the fact that it is perfect for Saturday morning horror shows. Unlike the first movie which depended on plot, this is a special effects driven film and the effects are not up to it. They are on par with Japanese monster movies from the 70's and are never good enough to make you believe, but like the old Godzilla movies it can be fun to just go along for the ride.

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