Director: Rick Sloane
Cast: John Mills, Sabrina Bolin, Jason Buuck, Jordana Berliner, Josh Green, Roland Esquivel, Chanel Ryan
Screenplay: Rick Sloane
92 mins. Not Rated.
I know what some of you are thinking: “There’s a Hobgoblins 2?” The others are probably thinking something similar: “There’s a Hobgoblins 1?” So yes, to settle your fears and questions, there is a Hobgoblins and a Hobgoblins 2. Let’s not waste any more time than that. The creator of the original film, Rick Sloane (Blood Theatre, Vice Academy), returned two decades later to write and direct this sequel to his groan-worthy eye-rolling original film.
We pick up this sequel a little time after the original, and Mr. McCreedy (Roland Esquivel, Anaheim the Film, Safety First: The Rise of Women!) has been committed to a psychiatric hospital after he blew up the studio from the first film in an effort to rid the world of the Hobgoblins. McCreedy warns Kevin (John Mills, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Brother’s Keeper) and his friends about the return of the Hobgoblins, but unfortunately, Kevin and his friends are young and rather stupid, and they fall right for the Hobgoblins and their trickery. Now, unless they can work together with McCreedy to overcome their fears, they are set to be next on the chopping block.
I’ll keep this one relatively quick tonight because there isn’t all that much to say. Hobgoblins 2 is terrible. The acting is atrocious, the writing is dull and boring (and essentially a worse retread of the original), the mythology (what little there is) doesn’t build upon or even reckon with the original, and the film is just a flat-out drag.
The only area where Hobgoblins 2 succeeds is that writer/director Sloane decided to make this a visual sequel to the original in that he shot on 35mm film and utilized effects work of the time, which is pretty cool. That also means no CGI (which, upon viewing it, makes a lot of sense). He was so intensely focused on creating this captivating visual sense that he pretty much ignored the funny elements or the scary elements altogether, but what can you do?
Hobgoblins 2 was supposed to come out in 1990, but the sequel just didn’t happen at the time. Now, looking back on the recast actors and the retread of the first film’s plot, there’s one glaring issue with this movie. It’s trying to be a bad cult horror movie. Much like Birdemic 2: Ressurection, Hobgoblins 2 is aware that the first film is bad, but back when the original was made, the intention was probably to make a good movie. Now, on the “success” of the original, the director has become self-aware of the love and intentionally made a bad movie, but this isn’t so-bad-it’s-good, it’s just so-bad.
1.5/5
For my review of Rick Sloane’s Hobgoblins, click here.
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