The Mutilator 2 (2023)
Directed by Buddy Cooper
The Mutilator is one of my favorite, cheesy 80s slasher movies. The bad acting and crazy gore is so much fun. Also the theme song is so much an 80s sitcom theme that it gets stuck in your head and feels really out of place. All of those things make The Mutilator a cult favorite. You should totally watch it! Thanks for reading my review of this fun standalone slasher from the 80s treasure chest. What’s that? There’s a Mutilator 2?! How did I not know this? Was it made straight to video at the end of the 80s? No? It was made in 2023?! Ugh, son of a bitch.
The Mutilator 2 revolves around a film crew making a remake to the Mutilator, and the cast from the first movie is invited to the premier and to see some of the process in making the remake. Yeah, its meta! Yeah they made a sequel to the Mutilator that claims the original was just a movie and this is the real world. If it sounds stupid, that’s because it is. Dear lord! I hate myself for watching this! I heard they were announcing this movie, but didn’t know it was available until now. I had to shell out a few bucks to watch this thing on Amazon Prime, I want a refund.
The acting is bad. Sure the acting was bad in the first one, but it was inadvertently bad. That’s what makes a bad movie, great. Take movies like Troll 2, Miami Connection, and Deadly Prey. They are all arguably horrible movies, but the complete ineptitude of them is charming. Hell, The Room is a prime example. The Room fails to be coherent, the main character doesn’t seem human, the story is nonsensical but man is it entertaining. The Mutilator 2 seems like it is trying to be bad, like a failed attempt to catch lightning in a bottle twice. The kills are good, I will give it that, but kills can only take you so far. The meta aspect was just kind of dumb. I realize wanting to bring back the original cast, and this was probably the only way. I would have much rather had them play different characters as cameos or something.
There are so many legacy sequels coming out as of late. Halloween 2018 kind of started the trend and I’m not sure it was such a good thing. While that movie was pretty decent and done with love, these other sequels seem to be missing the point. I’m not going to hate Mutilator 2 for having such a low budget look, because the original did. I realize this was just kind of a passion project for Buddy Cooper. I just don’t think this movie needed to exist. Was anyone clamoring for it? Not really. I think most people in the horror community were shocked and fearful that it would end up like this did.
I suppose if you’re the biggest die hard fan of The Mutilator, you are probably Buddy Cooper. I mean this movie acts like the first one was groundbreaking when it was a blip on the slasher radar back in the day. I wouldn’t really recommend this to anyone. I like the original, but this one misses the mark big time. I give this a D-, and the only reason it isn’t an F was because of the kills.
