Tales from the Hood 2 - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Tales From the Hood 2

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Final Score: ​

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Movie
Horror is back in the hood! I can’t believe it’s been 23 years since Tales from the Hood hit theaters back in 1995. I was a gangly 15 year old kid back then, just scooping up any horror flick I could get my hands for, but even I was unprepared for the twisted hilarity that was Tales from the Hood. Anthologies just weren’t my thing back then, and while I’ve gained an appreciation for the short n sweet style of storytelling, it’s a rare thing that I truly appreciate them in modern film making. Still, Tales from the Hood has a bit of a cult status among horror fans, and for good reason. The use of urban black issues with some wicked humor and gore made for a compelling quadrilogy of storytelling, and Clarence Williams III as the evil narrator, Mrs. Simms, was perfect. Now 23 years later, the writers of Tales from the Hood have come back together once more and both wrote and directed this sequel with some mixed results.

Like usual, the film is made of up 4 different stories, all supposedly dealing with black social issues of today. The first Tales from the Hood was a bit heavy handed, but it was handled as hyperbole and purposefully exaggerated to make for compelling stories. Tales from the Hood 2 takes that same way of amping things up with exaggerated situations and just amps it up to level 57 (on a scale of 1-10). It’s almost pure fantasy and hilarious exaggeration at this point, and while some of the stories work, others just feel like they miss their mark completely. It doesn’t help that this film was made on the cheap, and it shows badly at times.

Director/Writer Rusty Cundieff opens and closes the 4 story arc with two tales that are wildly different in tone and writing than each other, and with mixed results on this viewers perception as well. The first story opens up with a naively stupid white girl and her black friend visiting the museum of negrosity, a museum dedicated to racist memorabilia of black history. Seeing a little golliwog there that reminds her of the one she used to have, she tries her best to pry it from the hands of the caretaker with poor results. Breaking back into the museum after dark, the young kids find out that the golliwog is not who/what they think it is (there’s even a cameo from the little doll painting from the first film)

Darin Scott directs the center two vignettes, with probably the best results of the film. His first one is the single best of the 4 vignettes, telling us a story about the “actual” hood involving a psychic. A trio of thugs are torturing a pimp turned legitimate businessman, only to accidentally kill him in the process before he can tell them where he kept his money at. Desperate to find an answer, one of the thugs sees a psychic on the TV (you know, one of those con men like John Edward) and figures they can kidnap the psychic and use his “powers” to blackmail their dead victim (using his living girlfriend as leverage). What happens next is what happens when a fake psychic actually MEETS the spirits he has been claiming to channel his whole life.

Scott’s second film is more of a social issue rather than an urban black issue. Two men are preying on women with disastrous results. Thinking that they’re going to wine/dine then roofie a couple of wannabe models and then take advantage of them, a pair of dumb youths find out that they get a bit more than they can handle when their “victims” turn out to be supernatural predators.

Cundieff bookends the film with his final skit, and as I said above, it’s wildly different tonally than the first one. The one with the golliwog’s was gory and goofy, while this one takes a more serious approach, just with some SERIOUSLY heavy handed results. This one revolves around a black man who is living in Mississippi and working for a blatantly racist political candidate (looks like Colonel Sanders mixed with the classic racist plantation owner stereotype), only to be visited by the spirit of Emmett Till in a sort of Last Temptation of moment in order to get him to realize that what he has today. On one hand there’s a hint of brilliance under the story (I really like the idea of knowing that what you have today was built by those who came before you), but it’s layered in a such a heavy handed layer of satire that it just is too much to swallow. There’s entire sections where they sob about “how can you be a Republican? How can you go with the party that wants to put us back in chains?” to be taken seriously. It gets eye roll worthy and is blatant pandering to the “oh my goodness! Trump is the racist incarnation of Hitler!?” paranoia that is going on today. Had Cundieff kept more to the spirit realm of Emmett Till and not went so over the top with trying to pain his “opposition” as the devil, he might actually have told a decent story.

Just like the first, all 4 stories are held together with an overarching story with a mysterious narrator, replacing Keith David as Mr. Simms (who we ALLL know is going to turn out to be the devil at the end). This story is almost as obvious and blatant as Rusty Cundieff’s final story, but it’s told in such a hilarious fashion that it’s much less insulting to the mind as it is just comical.




Rating:

Rated R for language throughout, violence, disturbing images, and sexual references




Video:

Tales from the Hood 2 has a very clinical look to it that resembles a cable broadcast film. Usually this stems from being a digital shoot with a low budget (which Tales from the Hood 2 most definitely is), but overall the image is actually quite pleasing. There’s a glossy sheen to it that belies the digital cheapness, but clarity and colors are quite good for the most part. The different stories put on different “tones” for the visuals, with the first one being all bright and shiny, the second being more neutral, and the final skit having an “old south” look that is overly brightened and given a burnished golden yellow tinge that saps some of the bright colors away. Details are usually quite good (the Keith David narration bit is probably the sharpest and cleanest), and blacks look solid as well. Some mild banding and crush, but very limited at the end of the day.







Audio:

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is just as clinical and solid as the video presentation, not swaying me one way or the other in terms of excitement. It’s a solid track with good surround presence and solid vocals up in the front of the sound stage. Everything is handled competently, with no signs of distortion or unbalance anywhere in the mix. Dialog is crisp and clean throughout the 4 (or 5 if you count the narration) stories, and the LFE response is appropriate for the creepy horror nature of the film. An overall good track that does everything WELL, but never excels in any portion.


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Extras:

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Final Score: ​

Tales from the Hood 2 is a mixed bag, which is pretty typical of anthology films. The conglomeration of stories is kind of like a Rorschach test, hitting different people in different ways. Personally I feel that the first two stories were much better than the two ending stories, with Rusty Cundieff’s final story really failing harder than most. Tales from the Hood was always heavy handed in it’s approach, but it was done with some great acting, and it was deliciously cheesy with just enough seriousness to make it relatable. The sequel was done on the cheap, and comes across as soooooooooooo heavy handed that it loses the relatability to most people, and is pretty much targeted at one demographic, making it just feel cheap and silly at times. There’s still some fun to be had in the flick (mainly in the first hour), but the film does have its fair share of problems in the second half. Rental for me personally.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Keith David, Dedrick Brown, Alicia Davis, Creighton Thomas
Directed by: Rusty Cundieff, Darin Scott
Written by: Rusty Cundieff, Darin Scott
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, German, Spanish DTS 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French, German, Spanish, Cantonese, Dutch, Greek, Mandarin (Traditional)
Studio: Universal
Rated: R
Runtime: 111 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: October 2nd 2018

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Rental

 

[tripplej]

It will be a rental for me as well. Thanks for the review.