Its ham-handed attempt to make as much use of the reprising characters as possible is one of the saddest things a sequel has seen since OCEAN'S THIRTEEN

Rating: 5/10 (30 September 2013)

The Lambert family returns to dig deeper into their connection to the spirited world. Scares ensue right from the get-go, but are nothing more than an insincere sham to set the tone of a film that has far less substance than its predecessor. The premise, however, is interestingly a mixture of a sequel, a prequel and a parallel (which covers events occurring at the same time as the first film). The film seems to be inadvertently broken into halves, the first of which covers Byrne's character and the second covering Wilson's, creating an overall incoherent horror movie. It actually gets pretty interesting during the second half, but when the first half is so dull, it's a lot to expect your audience to be so gracious and maintain an open-mind the entire film. There also seems to be an effort to make this installment "the happier one of the series", and the ham-handed attempt to make as much use of the reprising characters as possible is one of the saddest things a sequel has seen since OCEAN'S THIRTEEN. Hopefully nobody will be reminded of this movie if someone ever decides to adapt HOUSE OF LEAVES to the screen.
** (out of four)