Directed by Tammi Sutton
Expectations: Moderate. I loved the first one, but I have a bad feeling about this one.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
I loved the original Killjoy, and even though I had heard some horrid things about this sequel, I held out hope. With an intro featuring a badass foot chase through an office building with low-rent funk blasting out of the soundtrack and white cops calling black perps motherfuckers, I thought I was about to find another modern blaxploitation horror gem. It was all a ruse, though, and quickly my excitement waned as the actual movie set in. Killjoy 2 concerns a group of young criminals being transported in a van to another facility… somewhere. At night, their van breaks down in the middle of nowhere and without any cell service, they venture out in search of a house with a phone they can use. That’s about half the movie so I should probably stop there.
The original Killjoy was low-budget at around the $150,000 mark, but it made the best with what it had and crafted an interesting, fun film. Killjoy 2 was made for the smaller sum of $30,000, and while it tries to make that work, the quality of the writing and the situations are just so poor that it’s nearly impossible to be entertained by this film. It only runs seventy-two minutes but it is an absolute slog to get through… well, that’s not entirely true. The first half, while bad, is infinitely more enjoyable than the last half when Killjoy is around. I know that sounds odd, but Killjoy was so scaled back and different in this that he only made me sad. Perhaps his on-screen strength is directly proportionate to the quality of the reason why someone is summoning him. In the first film there was a lifetime of pain and bullying, but in this film it’s only a desperate attempt to heal their friend’s gunshot wound. What were they thinking? Killjoy isn’t named Healjoy, he’s a fucking killer clown! The bastards in Killjoy 3 better have a damn good reason to call up Killjoy from the depths!
Killjoy was played by Angel Vargas is the original. I wrote about how much energy and feeling he brought to the role, and his wonderfully emotive lips became as much a part of the character as the wild afro or the clown makeup. Here, and in all future Killjoy films, he has been replaced by Trent Haaga. He does his best, but it just ain’t the same. Haaga isn’t nearly as charismatic or animated as Vargas was, and his lips just can’t hang. As a sidenote, Haaga got his start with Troma memorably playing the lead Diaper Mafia guy in Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV, making this one of those rare occurrences when Troma and Full Moon histories collide.
But through all that bullshit, there is a slight ray of sunshine. Even though it’s low-budget and the ambient noise of roads, fans, or whatever else is close to the “set” is much too prominent, the film’s direction by Tammi Sutton is not too bad. There’s a surprising amount of quality shots and some genuinely well-edited moments that surpass the film’s otherwise threadbare production. Killjoy 2 is Sutton’s début as a director, and while it doesn’t feel like she’s overly talented, there is enough potential here to make me wonder what would be if she had more money and a quality script behind her.
Killjoy 2 is a boring piece of shit, but there are worse movies out there. This one is offensive in the crushing boredom it inspires and its inability to truly capture the essence of what made Killjoy awesome in the first film. I hope that the next one is a step up from here, but I will say that the boredom is remedied and rectified by the inclusion of an original, Killjoy 2 specific end title song! Co-written and performed by cast member Olimpia Fernandez, the Killjoy 2 end title song is a fuckin’ hoot! It features lines like “Don’t ever play with that old black magic/Cuz suddenly your life could end in one big tragic” that make all the boring nonsense that came before it worth watching.
Next time I’ll be checking out the latest installment, Killjoy 3: Killjoy’s Revenge!