MNII: Summer's End

Director - Ryan Stacy (Watch This!, Midsummer Nightmares)
Starring - Scott Gillespie (Bludgeon), Kelci C. Magel (Run This Town), and Stacy Freeders (Midsummer Nightmares)
Release Date - 2014
Genre - Horror
Format - Streaming (Online Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     Sequels are always a bitter sweet love affair.  You always look forward to seeing where a story you enjoy is taken next but you fear the film will be nowhere near as good as the film that started it all. However, in the indie world a lot of filmmakers learn a lot making their first film resulting in a sequel that tends to surpass the original.  That brings me to MNII: Summer's End.  This sequel to the 2010 slasher flick, Midsummer Nightmares directed by Ryan Stacy, is a film that I have been nervous about viewing.  I reviewed Midsummer Nightmares (read my review here) last April and it was not the film I was hoping for.  The poster made me think it was a throwback to the 80s slasher but what I got instead was a post-Scream slasher that was dialogue rich.  Since my last viewing of MN I have seen Stacy's segment Ladies Night in the anthology film Watch This!  This segment showed so much creative growth and experience since MN and this gave me a glimmer of hope for MNII so when I received a link to the screener I was a little excited to see where the film went.
     The film begins where MN ends.  We then jump three years and the survivors of that horrific night have drifted apart...that is until the white mask wore by Danielle Winters (Freeders) in the original MN is discovered.  The two ladies that discover the mask try to warn Aubrey Small (Faulkner) but she does not heed this warning.  However, bodies start to pile up forcing everyone involved in the original massacre to search for answers.  They then begin to suspect that Danielle is still alive or someone has picked up where she left off.
     When it comes to slashers I am one of those assholes that split slashers into two distinct eras.  The classic, or golden age, of slashers spanned from the late 70s to the early 90s when the slasher sub-genre died out.  Until Craven brought it back from the dead in the mid-90s with Scream ushering in the second era of slashers known as the post-Scream slashers. Personally, I prefer the classic slashers over the post-Scream slashers, however, I respect the hell out of them all.  As for MNII, this film is the perfect example of a post-Scream slasher.  The characters in the film are aware they are in the midst of a slasher, the film opts out to have a dimwitted "final girl" and replaces her with a powerful female lead (in this case three strong female roles), and this film is heavy with character development which is something most classic slashers skipped on to make room for bloody deaths.  The acting in this film is hit and miss.  Freeders once again does a great job convincing the audience that she is crazy and Kelci C. Magel is a natural in front of the camera.  The rest of the cast once again has a hard time with volume control which is something I remember was a problem in the first film.  The film obviously circles around a group of females but it seems like all they do is scream at each other especially Christy Faulkner who portrays Aubrey Small.  Her character is afraid and worried but it just came across as her being bitchy to the other characters.  This did get a little old throughout the film.  The story is more of the first film with an even bigger twist ending.  The only real downside to the film is once again it suffers from slow pacing and dialogue rich scenes.  That is as far as I want to go with that for fear of spoiling the film (which I promised I would not).  Finally, this film has the same stock kills that the slasher genre is known for but this time around the special effects are tremendously better.  The kills in the original were very bland and not that fun.  However, this time around I actually enjoyed the kills.  Overall, MNII is a textbook slasher that offers up beautiful women and blood.  It may be slow paced but the kills do more than make up for it in the end.  I recommend it!