01st Oct2021

’10/31 Part 2′ Review

by Alain Elliott

Written by Mike McPherson, Jennifer Nangle | Directed by Brett DeJager, Max Groah, John Hale III, Zane Hershberger, Robert Lanphere, Jennifer Nangle, Tory van Buskirk, Stephen Wolfe

I do love horror anthology movies. They can cover a wide range of horror sub genres, cost nothing or millions, a segment can be thirty seconds or thirty minutes and if you don’t like it there’s almost certainly a new story to be told a very short time later. Of course there are some anthologies where there’s more bad than good but on the whole I have found that the reverse to be true, so I was happy to check out 10/31 Part 2.

Like I hoped, there’s a lot packed into the (near enough) 100 minute runtime, starting off with a few grindhouse-style trailers. Short and fun, these trailers include titles such as The Sasquatch Trucker, The Candy Taker and October Kids. Each of them hitting the theme and style they are going for quickly and just putting a smile on my face. It’s a good start to the movie.

We are then introduced to Malvolia – Queen of Screams (an Elvira rip-off) who introduces the feature. Despite feeling like a knock-off it does work and the actress playing her does a decent job. And the first segment we see is called A Samhain Liturgy. It starts off a pretty basic Halloween story with a babysitter bringing her boyfriend over on Halloween night when things take a turn for the worst. I did enjoy black metal being used as part of the score and there’s some decent practical effects. But it becomes unintersting and does go on a bit too long. That said it does feature one fantastic shot where you end up focusing on the background for the horror.

Next up is Dead Lift, another of the seemingly ever-growing list of Uber car movies. In this case what happened when you pick up a vampire. It has a sci-fi feel to it and a nice synth score with some cool ideas. After this we do get some welcome trailers (I’d be happy for all anthology movies to have fake trailers to be honest).

Next up is Overkill, my favourite segment of 10/31 Part 2. I didn’t think that for the first couple of minutes though as it starts like a slasher movie parody has some okay practical effects and occasionally funny dialogue but with a killer wearing a cheap hockey mask and didn’t expect this to go anywhere exciting. I was glad to be proved wrong because when a second killer is introduced things go in an unexpected but very clever direction and I ended up loving it.

Unfortunately the last short ‘Sister Mary’, despite having some good ideas and once again some decent practical effects, it does feel a bit all over the place.

So, maybe unsurprisingly the awfully titled 10/31 Part 2 is a mixed bag. That said there’s some really cool stuff in there and the time goes by pretty quickly for the most part. Although my go-to of October-themed anthologies would be Tales of Halloween10/31 Part 2 is ideal to watch this Halloween night.

10/31 Part 2 is out now on demand and on digital from Terror Films.

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