OnDemand viewing on August 17th in Chicago, IL. The sequel to 2015's 13 Cameras sees Gerald (Neville Archambault) up to his old tricks of peeping in on unsuspecting young women. This time around he rents a property to a family that is on vacation with their 20ish year old nubile daughter and her equally nubile friend.
Also back is Claire (Brianne Moncrief), the pregnant woman from the last picture. Gerald keeps her in a home made underground dungeon. Gerald is actually raising her son and seems to be doing a decent job considering Gerald doesn't speak much and is always running around installing cameras or streaming his footage to the creepazoids on the dark web.
Things in the vacation rental start off slow with the two young women, Molly and Danielle (Brytnee Ratledge and Amber Midthunder), with some shower and pool stuff. It then escalates from Gerald stealing panties for a customer to a customer actually paying to have Gerald help kidnap the girls. Suffice to say that the night of the kidnapping is the big climax. Gerald has a change of heart and kills the kidnapper, his "son" rescues Claire, Gerald ends up kidnapping Danielle but she escapes with Claire and they run over Gerald making their getaway.
Victor Zarcoff returns to write the film having relinquished directorial duties to Seth Fuller and Scott Hussion. The picture isn't really very good, hence the 13% Rotten Tomatoes rating. There's too much going on. What made 13 Cameras work was it's simplicity. The filmmakers try to take it up too many notches and it fails. During the epilogue, cops reveal that Gerald owns all the properties that he had cameras in. They guy had money coming in from the properties and from his customers from the dark web. He really didn't need to kidnap and kill anymore. Gerald also has mad coding skills, is good with tools, technology and web design. He could easily get a good paying job with a cable company. Not the most friendly guy sure but definitely skilled. I also don't believe that he would have raised a child either. Plus, the sequel is two years removed from the original and the boy is 10 years old. I felt that the connections to the first film, Claire and her son, weren't really necessary. I mean, it was creepy that he bathed Claire but it didn't add anything, it just padded the run time. We know that Gerald is a really creepy guy.
It's also difficult to believe that the police didn't sniff around a bit more after all the people went missing from the first film. Gerald kidnaps a girl after she discovers him in her apartment and no one ever comes looking for her. Cops would have come to him since he was a landlord if they figured out at the end of the film that he owned the properties. It was too much of a stretch. In the end, the film was too unbelievable and seemed boring, even with a 90 minute run time. The tension from 13 Cameras didn't translate to the sequel. Skip it.
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