Stupendous. You can’t get anything like this anywhere else. Nicole makes a masterstroke move by using wild paper dolls to represent Connor. The framing of his earlier 1970s haircut with wide staring eyes is a unique cinema visual that should be hanging in a gallery. It cements the intentional artificial aesthetic that gives the images an irresistible power, similar to the sensation found in the films of Syberberg. I couldn’t take my eyes off this horror short as it made the skin on my arms ripple. The miniatures put to work in the first film are literally back with a vengeance. What is striking here is how Nicole breaks new ground with the presentation of this installment.
The first short told about the house was a loud, colorful attack on the senses like Inferno. Home Sweet Home II goes down another road by exploring lethal restraint instead of delicious excess. The lighting is more realistic, and the sinister elements are more subtle. This elevates the creep factor instead of diluting it. Also, like the great underground shorts of yore, the visuals are really fun to get high too. The seams of the reality showed will fly through your head with the power of Christopher Reeve’s superimposed cape. The filmmaker pulls off the Herculean task of telling a story in a new way without cannibalizing the originality of the first installment. This time the narrative doesn’t have the ambiguity of whether the haunting is real or imagined. Connor has no hint of crazy before encountering what happens after midnight. By removing the hallucination framework, Nicole increases the threat of the house and also embellishes the scope of her original short. The enterprising director also rights a historic wrong in horror history by making a genuine prequel in her haunt house saga. In 1982, Amityville II: The Possession was marketed as a prequel when it really was a sequel, featuring the devil talking through a Sony Walkman as concrete proof. I feel vindicated that we are obviously deep back in the day with the 1972 setting. The way the narrative finishes here is confounding and undefined. I was initially disappointed with the ending but began to respect its boldness. Home Sweet Home II shows there is a gleaming spire in a corner of the world of cinematic art that is being built with someone’s bare hands.
