Director: Zoe Kavanagh
Release date: 2024
Contains spoilers
The sequel to Taryn Barker: Demon Hunter, this Irish movie transplants itself from the Dublin of the first film to America. The first film was the origin story for Taryn (Niamh Hogan, Feed), a young woman whose younger sister was taken by demons and so entered into a Faustian bargain to avenge her, before realising that the deal really meant her body being possessed by a demon, and so fighting back.
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| Sparkly |
The first film was just focused on demons, this one has plenty of vampires as background – though a main antagonist could be read as vampire also. After a prologue set in 1986 and Camp Beaver and seeing the potential final girl killed by the slasher Lucian Krull (Lar Mclachlan), it flips to the modern day with Taryn hunting down leads for an artefact known as the necrox. This leads her to a sparkly vampire but, just before he spills, he is killed by a non-sparkly vampire. Taryn is able to get a tracker on the other vampire.
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| on the hunt |
She follows him underground and finds a holding pen for livestock – and for livestock read trafficked women. She manages to rescue them, kill him and get the half of the necrox he is carrying. Taryn is living in hiding with Ethan (Kevin O'Malley) as part of an underground demon hunting organisation. She is a wanted fugitive after being blamed for the slaughter of a group of cops in the previous film. Ethan works out that the other half of the necrox is at Camp Beaver and it had been used to animate Krull – who had been a satanist and groundskeeper there.
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| bathing in blood |
However, Taryn’s actions have tweaked the demons and head of Illuminati Industries, Elysia Cronika (Lisa Wilcox, Don’t Suck), is threatened with exposure if she doesn’t either kill Taryn or push her off track with her hunt for the necrox. Cronika is our character who could code vampire, though she is referred to as a time witch. Firstly she was the head of the trafficking ring, but the coding I identified is primarily down to the fact that she blood bathes (and we are talking a swimming pool full). Later, in a time ritual, she cuts her hand and sand comes out – that could be read as the sands of time but also could be the desiccated innards of a vampire that bathes in blood rather than ingesting it.
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| a consensual nibble |
After two failed attempts on Taryn’s life she does said ritual and Taryn is pulled into a time vortex, whilst travelling to Camp Beaver, and deposited in 1987 – as are a group of youths who were on the same journey. Taryn has to babysit them, trying to protect them from Krull, complete a ritual to banish Krull and get the half of the necrox off him and get back to the present day. Of course, given the date none of the mobile phones work. I should also mention another vampire, in the modern day, who we see for a moment consensually feeding and then staked via stake gun.
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| Niamh Hogan as Taryn |
The part in the past is lifted from the slasher handbook, if the slasher was faced with a kick-ass demon hunter, and uses the tropes of that genre to its advantage. The plot is convoluted and perhaps a tad reliant on the first film to make total sense to a new viewer. The acting is varied, with some actors perhaps less experience than others. However Niamh Hogan appears to be having great fun and the tone of this film is more light-hearted than the earlier film. There is one major issue, however – cgi enemies. Badly textured, with no weight and, honestly, pretty bonk – these let down the film and betray the ambition the film displayed. 5.5 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
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