Some days I love this job. Today is not one of those days.
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“A Haunted House 2” finds Marlon Wayans writing, producing and starring in this sequel that tries to blend parody, horror, and comedy, but really ends up failing at all three. Sure there are some sequels where we all ask “why” but in this case I think the question is better stated as “Dear God in heaven, why?” This is just a bad movie in so many ways. I mean seriously, how do you even finish making this movie? How in a movie like this, does somebody not wake up halfway through filming and say, “Uh, hey guys, are we sure we’re committed to releasing this?” Speaking of committed, I will give Marlon that one thing, he’s definitely committed.
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And we’ll go ahead and call it the best thing, since otherwise there wouldn’t be one, but Marlon goes after this material like it was everything to him. Unfortunately it only adds up to a sort of cinematic constipation; lots of facial contortions, pain, and effort, and then all you have to show for it is well… you get the idea.
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My point is, this movie is awful in every way. I’ll just highlight a few. First the humor, there is none. Seriously, even though I didn’t like the first one either, at least there were a couple of moments I chuckled at. This one, nothing. It relies so heavily on vulgarity and racism to make you laugh that the whole experience is just uncomfortable. Second, the scares, none of those either. Not that that’s a surprise, a movie like this isn’t really supposed to be scary is it? It’s supposed to be a parody, right? Yeah, well it fails there too. Parodying movies and moments from movies that many just haven’t seen. If any of it is recognizable it would probably be the stuff that references “The Conjuring” but most of the time I was thinking wait, what was that from again? And I’m the guy that sees every movie! What I’m saying is it’s hard to consider yourself a parody when the source material has such little cultural reference to begin with. And who is this movie for anyway? The horror fan? The comedy fan? The Wayans fan? The venn diagram just doesn’t seem like it would connect those three very well.
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At the end of the day, A Haunted House 2 tries desperately to be something more than a cheap series of pop culture slams and crude actions…. and completely fails. It lands the rare F.
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Thanks for checking out this Your Movie Friend review, stay tuned for this review’s “Best Ever” challenge here in bit but first, I’m going to put up some stuff you can click over in this area. If you’d like to subscribe, which I would much appreciate, you can do so by clicking the big gray subscribe button. Want to see more? Simply click over here to see reviews for the Disney Nature doc “Bears”. Transcendence, or Heaven is for Real. You can also Click the logo up here to go to yourmoviefriend.com where you can search by title for reviews. And finally this review’s “Best Ever” Challenge, where you name the best movie ever in a particular category and also try to identify my choice. What is the “the best movie parody movie ever”. Mine’s easy.. initials. That’s all you need to know. Drop your own answer and a guess at mine in the comments and first person to guess mine gets a point! Thanks and please subscribe!