Terror Train 2 review.
Tubi wasn’t content filling our Halloween with a Terror Train remake…they managed to release a direct sequel in time for the new year. Where the remake lacked much in the way of new ideas…Terror Train 2 takes its characters to some new places…even if it is the same setting. They aren’t necessarily good places.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Terror Train 2
Directed by Phillipe Gagnon
Written by Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin
Starring Robyn Alomar, Tim Rozon and Nadine Bhabha
Terror Train 2 Review
For reasons we may never fully understand…Tubi pumped out a sequel to Terror Train just a couple of months after dropping their remake. I don’t know what the record is for the fastest release of a sequel…but I’m going to choose to believe this is the record. Because why in the world would anyone else have done this?
We are now in the rarified space of having a movie that we can’t spoil because it is a new release…that is a sequel to a movie that we also can’t spoil because it is also a new release. Terror Train 2 sees the survivors of the first film decide, against all common sense, to get back on the same train again. The movie sells this as a therapy exercise but if your fear is train based, I’d argue there is no need to get past it.
Terror Train 2 has a distinct advantage over the remake from October. That movie just followed the original step by step most of the time. This one had to come up with something new for the characters to do. This becomes a mixed bag very quickly. Outside of the final girl…every returning character from the first movie is done dirty in Terror Train 2.
The message it’s trying to send is that people deal with trauma in different ways. The message it’s actually sending is “why couldn’t the killer have gotten these horrible people the first time?” Annoying people are dialed up to the point where annoying is their sole character trait. That’s ultimately fine because you know they’re going to meet the business end of a knife or a bullet at some point. Fame culture is the target this time around. That’s about as original as doing a killer on a train movie twice in three months at this point.
The bigger issue is what Terror Train 2 does to the likable returning characters. One person’s survival is never explained to any satisfactory degree. They were most definitely dead in the first movie. You keep waiting for there to be a twist that reveals something interesting about who they really are or why they survived. It never comes. Another character is un-summarily dispatched despite having been a key figure in the original story. That’s fine…it’s a slasher movie. It’s just done with so little resonance that it feels like a missed opportunity.
Our final girl fares better than the other characters. Her arc makes sense. Well…aside from ever getting back on this train. She at least understands how stupid it was to do it and regrets it immediately and often. The most disappointing aspect of Terror Train 2 is that it shows us different shades of these characters…and then just puts them into the exact same situation. There’s more variation between this and the first one than the remake and the original…but essentially Terror Train 2 is just a remake of the remake.
That’s a lot of negative thoughts laid out in a row. And guess what? Like its predecessor, Terror Train 2 is not a good movie. Also like its predecessor…I enjoyed watching Terror Train 2. I still can’t explain the appeal of these bad movies. I can tell you that they share the exact same appeal. Another rushed effort. The kills are even more forgettable this time. If you told me that they filmed this in a week I’d believe it. If you told me that they filmed both in the same week I’d believe that too. My hope would be that they filmed a third one that week and Tubi will drop it for St. Patrick’s Day.
Scare Value
As interesting as it is to see such an immediate sequel that deals with the fallout of the original…Terror Train 2 really isn’t any better than the first one. It lets the characters do something other than retell the story of the original beat for beat…and has some things to say about fame and trauma. Meandering for too long and still featuring forgettable kills. It retains the watchability of the remake…but fails to add anything of importance to the story. Again.
2/5
Terror Train 2 Link
Streaming on Tubi
Terror Train 2 Trailer
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