All Hallows' Eve was a precursor to the spin-off Terrifier franchise, featuring Art the Clown, this follow-up is a standalone sequel with no relation to the original, simply a film with the same format from various directors and a new connected antagonist. Basically, a Woman (Andrea Monier) is being stalked by a man wearing a Jack-o'-lantern mask, the Trickster (Damien Monier). She evades the pumpkin-faced weirdo and gets to her front door, finding a VHS on the doorstep. The video tape contains a series of gruesome tales that could be real. The first segment ("Jack Attack") sees babysitter Elizabeth (Helen Rogers) looking after young Jack (Tyler Rossell), and they carve a pumpkin together. While she roasts the pumpkin seeds, she texts her boyfriend Elliott (Steve Anderson Jr.) who she hoped would come over, but she believes he is sleeping with another woman. Jack tries on his scarecrow costume, starts eating the pumpkin seeds, and feeds some to the dog, Oscar. A moment later, Jack is gasping for breath and collapses to the floor. Elizabeth tries to give him an improvised tracheotomy with a knife, but it fails. Suddenly, Jack's bleeding neck sprouts creeping vines, and his stomach starts to expand, and a growing pumpkin explodes. Having consumed the seeds herself, Elizabeth's stomach starts growing, she panics and grabs a knife to get the growing pumpkin out, but her intestines spill out and she dies. Moments later, the same fate befalls Oscar the dog. The second segment ("The Last Halloween") sees a post-apocalyptic future, with four children on Halloween dressed as a Witch (Zoe Fraser), the Devil (Brendan Heard), a Ghost (Jake Goodman), and the Grim Reaper (Drew Davis) wandering the ruins of an evacuation zone trick or treating. They encounter a Wary Woman (Angela Besharah) who warns them to be careful and an eerie Chatterbox (Julian Richings) talking gibberish who drops dead animal remains into their bags. They move on to a house where a man named Jack (Ron Basch) answers the video doorbell, but he tells them to go away. His wife Kate (Emily Alatalo) pleads to let them in, but he angrily refuses. She disobeys him and lets them in, but they transform into grotesque versions of their costumes. The Witch (Kristina Uranowski), the Devil (Adrian G. Griffiths), the Ghost (Ali Adatia), and the Grim Reaper (Alastair Forbes) kidnap the wife. After the trick-or-treaters leave the house in costumed form, the house explodes, and it is shown to be a hellish apocalypse. The third segment ("The Offering") sees a Father (Bob Jaffe) driving with his Son (Jared Mark Smith) in a pickup truck to a deserted area. There, they present an offering of meat to an evil entity. It is revealed the offering is not enough and the father locks the son out of the truck, leaving him to be taken by the entity. The fourth segment ("Descent") sees a woman named Andrea (April Adamson) visiting her friend Vanessa (Renee Madison Cole, aka Renee Intlekofer) to find her murdered and the Killer (Robert McLaughlin) still in the house. He stalks her but she escapes. Six months later, Andrea is working late and gets into the elevator to leave. She is shocked when she recognises the killer getting in. Andrea is petrified when the lift breaks down and the man speaks to her. Rattled, she stabs him to death with a pen. Once the elevator reaches the lobby, she sees the same man yet again, first as a police officer, then as a clerk. Andrea screams as the two men are shown to be different people, she has hallucinated seeing the killer and murdered an innocent man (Steven Bordelon). The fifth segment ("Masochist") sees a sideshow carnival barker Sade (Bill Oberst Jr.) inviting three teenagers, Sam (Finn Kobler), Fat Pat (Zion Healy) and Rick the Dick (Reno Selmser), to play his spinning wheel game. They agree and are instructed to choose any number of weapons and tools to throw at a man (Jonathan Nation) strapped to the wheel to make him bleed. Each takes their turn with a nail-covered baseball and butcher knife. The third uses a nail gun, but the man strapped to the wheel is revealed to be his father. The victim pleads for help, but the boy has been abused by his father, the boy shoots him with the nail gun and then throws a running chainsaw at his head. The sixth segment ("A Boy's Life") sees a boy named Max (Griffin Gluck) who is grieving the loss of his father (Brian Majestic). He has been having nightmares about monsters under the bed, but his mother Loraine (Christie Lynn Smith) assures him there is nothing to be afraid of. The following day, while Max is drawing creatures, Lorraine talks about her experiences thinking that scary things were in her room when she was younger. She is concerned about seeing a black demonic monster in a drawing. She then sees Max in an army costume setting up various traps. During the night, Max's traps are triggered by something, but Lorraine is angry and insists there are no monsters. Seeing that Max has taken his father's army tags, she calms down and decides to roleplay as a fellow army soldier to "defeat" the monster. Believing she has helped him to overcome his fear and bond with each other, she tucks him into bed. Before she leaves the room, an unseen monster grabs her and drags her screaming under the bed and Max screams in terror. The seventh segment ("Mr. Tricker's Treat") sees an untidy man, Mr. Tricker (Michael Serrato), holding teenagers PJ (James Markidis) and Patrick Logothetti hostage, one in a cage and one handcuffed in the kitchen, feeding them only on candy, causing them to be sick. He drags one of the boys to his front porch where he sits him on a bench. Then he grabs the other teen, takes him into the front yard and hangs him to death with a sheet over his body. The first teen wakes up and the man returns to slit his throat with a box cutter. A neighbour, Monica (Carrie Seim), screams in shock but then calms, assuming the dead bodies are realistic-looking decorations. The man smiles and knocks her out to add to his other "decorations". The eighth and final segment ("Alexia", in Spanish) sees Spanish teenager Franco (Sergio Berón) looking at social media, lamenting the death of his ex-girlfriend Alexia (Pilar Boyle). He starts having an online conversation with his new girlfriend, Melina (Paula Carruega), which becomes flirty. But he is freaked out seeing a ghoulish apparition on the computer screen which he then unplugs. Melina comes over to hang out with Franco. He momentarily leaves to use the bathroom, and Melina watches a video on his computer. When he returns, the dead ex has replaced the girlfriend and attacks him. The Woman finishes watching the VHS and is feeling fearful after watching all these strange stories. After ejecting the video, the man in the pumpkin mask appears behind her and slits her throat. Also starring Anthony Backman as Brad ("Descent"), Andy Dylan as Security Officer ("Descent"), Jamie Neese as Security Desk Clerk ("Descent"), and Kalie Acheson as Female Masochist ("Masochist"). The cast are all fine, it repeats the format that watching the video is what summons the killer, "Jack Attack" and "A Boy's Life" stand out as the most interesting of all the short stories, while the rest are average or silly, and there is a fair amount of gore to get your attention, it is only a mildly watchable horror anthology. Okay!
Review of All Hallows' Eve 2
