"The Stepfather 2" is a slightly better sequel effort, even though it's still flawed.
**SPOILERS**
In a psychiatric hospital, Gene Clifford, (Terry O'Quinn) is in rehab for his past crimes, and manages to escape during a trick. Hiding in California, he takes a job as a family therapist and has a group session where he meets Carol Grayland, (Meg Foster) a single mom. When they begin to develop a friendship, along with her son Todd, (Jonathan Brandis) her friend Matty Crimmins, (Caroline Williams) decides to get involved, not completely trusting him. Able to manipulate her to believe him to marry her, which forces her into action and is able to uncover his secret. Confronted with his real plan of marrying to preserve his idea of the perfect, he goes berserk to keep it that way.
The Good News: This one is a rather decent sequel. The fact that this one still has the creepy motive and back-story for the main villain is a good selling point. It still feels rather creepy and unsettling due to a rather realistic feeling that happens to come from the film. From all the alternative actions taken to ensure that, to the way that it makes the activities he does both normal-seeming and yet really creepy at the same time. That is a fun quality and it adds to the overall tone of the film. This one's best features are it's few horror moments on display. These include the few slashing moments beforehand, which is the confrontation in the house as well as the kitchen brawl later in the film. Both of these are great and a lot of fun, and mixed together with the impressive impound lot scene that has a few comedic moments in it, and these are all rather fun. The wedding, though, is all kinds of fun. From the manic stalking to the constant brawling to it's few blood-splattering moments to the sheer joy at how it ends, this is all considered into a really great sequence. These here are all that work for the film.
The Bad News: This one here is really disappointing for several reasons, and most of it is due to the fact that it seems to be classified as a slasher rather than a thriller like the first one, which it really should be. There's nothing in here that is characteristic of a slasher film, since the body count is barely there, the few kills on display are barely worth talking about other than the ones mentioned before, and it never once tries to elicit a feeling of constant terror from others before the stalking at the finale. This one never tries to become a slasher, and instead of being called a thriller, which is based around the film's central gimmick and theme, this one tries to play with that rather than going for straight-out horror and all that's left is a feeling of boredom from those who expect a slasher. As a thriller, it isn't that bad, but it's still left with the fact that nothing even happens, and all that occurs before the finale is the attempts to hide the truth from those searching into the past, and these are rarely interesting. That makes this feel even more boring to those expecting a slasher, but when these events aren't that good to begin with, it lowers it to the other fans, leaving this one feeling down even more. Even worse the film plays up all the black comedy one-liners that were requisite for any mass killer anti-hero in a sequel franchise during the late 80s, with the one-liners coming in at very obvious and badly timed moments, and are just plain distracting and rarely funny. This is better than it should be, but still falls a little short.
The Final Verdict: With one of the main problems that plagued the first one while also fixing one of it's key ones, this one comes out in the end slightly better. Interesting for those who enjoy the psycho-thriller genre, while slasher fans should feel a little better about it over the first one and should give it a chance.
Rated R: Violence, Language and a mild sex scene
