Fear PHarm 2 – review

Director: Dante Yore

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

Clearly the sequel to Fear PHarm, this follows were the last film left off, ups the vampiric ante a tad and though it increases the slasher element (there is much less build up) does feel somewhat more by the numbers with that aspect.

Before the film proper, however, we see how Herschel (John Littlefield) became embroiled in this venture. He walks into one of his barns to see a young man strapped to a table and bleeding. His wife Florence (Nadine Stenovitch) appears and has been experimenting on him. He seems disturbed, she is excited as she has found “the gene” and can gain subjects from Herschel’s maze… he loves her and, proving his love, euthanises the victim.

Melanie in a coma

So, to the present and, as well as seeing a miracle cream infomercial, we find that it is a busy day at the pumpkin patch/maze and Andy (Mario Rocha, the Hunted) is watching Melanie (Tiana Tuttle). So, this is a MASSIVE SPOILER to film 1. Melanie was drawn definitively
as the final girl and was the one of those attacked who had massive amounts of the age defying genes in her skin. To frustrate the clan she slit her own throat and defied the final girl status. Clearly, however, she survived (later we discover that Gemma (Aimee Stolte) saved her). She, currently, is in a medically induced coma. Suddenly a semi-naked, semi de-skinned victim runs past and alarms go off.

John Littlefield as Herschel

Of course, this means alarms go off around the maze and the family hurry to hunt down the escapee before he gets to a public area. Andy, rushing out, doesn’t notice that he catches an IV drip and pulls it out of Melanie’s arm. The runner gets quite far, is seen by some maze explorers (who think he is part of the show) and is eventually stabbed with an arrow by Gemma). Crisis averted… except he then stumbles wounded onto the pumpkin patch in front of a little girl and parent – an event not commented on and left hanging like a gapping plot hole.

escapees

There is a family meeting but no one is watching the victims, and there are a few (but I suspect too few to fill the 10k reported orders that have come in). Unfortunately, Melanie (mute through the film due to her slit throat) unhooks the other captees from their IVs and quickly they are all out of their chemically induced comas… except… I did a check and the path out of such a coma is pretty slow – taking between 2 – 24 hours and certainly not back up on their feet (with large grafts of skin removed) able to get out and start trying to escape a maze, run (and fight back when it comes to some of them). Suspension of disbelief is a great thing (we all did it for the speedy recovery in Kill Bill for instance) but this was really difficult to achieve in this case.

Andy the Clown

Nevertheless, the very generic, forgettable characters with little to zero characterisation are then hunted down. Melanie, of course, is the toughest of them all. I mentioned that the vampiric element of the cream made from genes harvested (and the word harvest is used several times) from stripped skin is increased and that is in the claim that it not only stops aging, it actually reverses it. There is the capitalistic vampirism and this is brought sharper into focus by Herschel (who has a motivation of loving his deceased wife and her crazy idea but, also, has a demotivation of the scheme costing him sons) is still greedy enough to want to franchise the cream to the Japanese (the actors of which, apparently, were speaking Mandarin).

fighting Gemma

This played with the interesting elements from the first film but I didn’t find it as knowingly sassy when it came to the script. The slasher elements weren’t as good (though the almost incompetent presentation of the male killers – Gemma is all business – was interesting). Like the first film we see a fleeting moment of guys in lab coats but I am really not buying the idea of the industrial farming when pitched against the (very few) victims kept in a barn. Not as good as part 1. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK