After looking over her birthday gifts, a horror fan discovers the existence of a shot-on-iPhone film and decides to create a film herself involving her friends centered around the story of the movie, which soon devolves into a nightmarish scenario involving them being targeted by a crazed fan following the legacy himself.
This one was a decent enough franchise sequel. Among its better features here is the way this one brings up the use of the technological advances that fuel the narrative along. Given that the majority of the meta-angle of the franchise is brought back into play here, from the behind-the-scenes work involving their early conception into starting the film and all the escalating tactics that we see as this gets closer to fruition, the intimacy and small-scale work created in the film is all incredibly well-done. Tying the events between the other film and what they're doing with their project creates a fine sense of paranoia and obsession that drives everything along. The film also manages to get a lot right in the final half where everything comes to a head in fine form. As the group realizes that the events of the past are coming to affect them, there's some creepiness to be had with the exaggerated manner of how the curse comes forth as a physical presence towards them. The way this one escalates the situation from meetings with strange people acting crazy to full-on stalker sequences featuring the crazed individual creating an actual snuff film around the edges of their story. This creates a nice series of indie-styled kill scenes with the way it dispatches everyone in graphic succession through a rather fine twist that sells everything happening quite nicely. These aspects are what make for a fun time with this one. There are some issues to be had with this one. One of the biggest problems is the fact that the films' meta angle means so much of this one goes unexplained for long stretches of the running time. Trying to keep track of whether or not the previous films are real accounts of travesties that happened or actual movies is a task that seems to confuse the characters in the film much less a viewer. The idea of bringing everything together into a coherent franchise is fine but it just makes this one incredibly confusing to sort out. The other issue here is some rather confusing camera-work that makes this look far less like a true found-footage effort and more like a post-production effort, with split-screen shots, alternating perspectives and people who couldn't be there to shoot scenes. These are what hold the film back.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.
