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The Hospital 2
R0 - America - ITN Entertainment/MVD Visual Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (19th November 2016). |
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The Film
 Five years after the massacre at the abandoned St. Leopold's Hospital – detailed in The Hospital (which achieved some notoriety in the UK after supermarket Tesco withdrew the DVD due to customer complaints about the content of a BBFC-approved version that had been submitted pre-cut by twenty minutes) – in which caretaker Stanley Creech (co-writer/director Daniel Emery Taylor), Alan (co-writer/director Jim O'Rear), and Jack (Dead Moon Rising's Jason Crowe) streamed the torture and rape of a series of women and men for an online audience of snuff enthusiasts. The only survivors of the massacre were Skye (My Bloody Valentine 3D's Betsy Rue replacing Robyn Shute), Beth (Constance Medrano), and paranormal investigator Scott Tepperman (as himself) who was arrested as a suspect and only just recently cleared of culpability. Although the three rapists are believed to be dead, Skye and Beth are still on their guard as their new roommate Mandy (Lara-Louisa Piacquadio) learns after getting the capsule recap of the previous film's events. It turns out their fears are justified as – in order for the filmmakers to offending even more viewers – Alan and Stanley have set up their operation again using the Nyman Home for Battered Women as a front with Alan's estranged but incestuous daughter Samantha (Don't Look in the Basement 2's Megan Emerick) as supervisor screening the clientele for suitable victims of further physical and sexual abuse. Stanely, however, is proving to be too much of a loose cannon for Samantha, as he has been working to track down Skye and Beth. With new media attention on the case after five years – including an online newspaper article into which Taylor and O'Rear insert a poster for their earlier effort Camp Massacre – Skye and Beth decide they both need to get away; so Skye goes to visit her hippie parents (he mother played by Dollface's Debbie Rochon) in the country while Beth goes out on the town with friends. When Stanley finds out where they live but discovers Mandy and her boyfriend Andrew (Nicholas Huntsman) in their place, he murders Andrew and tortures Mandy into revealing the locations of her friends before raping and murdering her. Upon discovering Stanley's activities, Alan thinks they should let sleeping dogs lie, but Samantha thinks that an online show featuring "the ones that got away" would bring in enough revenue for father and daughter to give up the business and head south of the border. When Beth discovers the bodies of Mandy and Andrew, she tries to warn Skye who is already in the clutches of Samantha and Alan, so Beth must rely on redemption-seeking Scott to help her rescue Skye. Criminally overlong at twenty-four seconds shy of two hours, The Hospital 2 attempts to beat the dead horse of torture porn. Although I have not seen the first film, the sequel has no redeeming value and does not have to work hard to be as ugly as it is (the impact of the violence is lessened by some ludicrous CGI but it is never so much grueling or outrageous so much as just in bad taste). Rue and Rochon may not be top-tier scream queens, but both deserve better than this, and one has to wonder just how much Taylor and O'Rear are paying the actresses to let them strip and paw them because it is hard to believe that even the least experienced would be actress with the lowest self-esteem would consider this kind of cinematic exposure glamorous or expect it to lead to better things.
Video
Amateurishly shot in high definition with mismatched lighting, exposure, and color timing from shot to shot, the faults are inherent in the original photography and cannot be blamed on the serviceable anamorphic encode.
Audio
The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio mix is likewise uneven with levels changing sometimes within the same shot. Closed captions are included if your ear fails to pick up such zingers as Samantha referring to her father Alan's working relationship with Stanley as an "Of Mice and Men bromance..."
Extras
Extras include the film's trailer (1:43), a five-part video diary (22:56) for the web, unfunny bloopers (6:34) , and the "Kenworthy" featurette (13:24), an amateurish background piece on the historic Kenworthy Carlisle Hall in Alabama.
Overall
Criminally overlong at twenty-four seconds shy of two hours, The Hospital 2 attempts to beat the dead horse of torture porn.
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