Vacation of Terror 2: Diabolical Birthday (1991)

Vacation of Terror 2: Diabolical Birthday (1991) Directed by Pedro Galindo III

The evil, pale-faced doll returns to this folksy Mexican horror sequel with far superior vigor, impish appetite for swallowing souls, and incarnated as a greenish, gross-out goblin-faced theriomorphic freak. Vacaciones de Terror 2: Cumpleaños Diabolico directed this time by Pedro Galindo III improves in many respects – it is aesthetically breezy as it capitalizes on its obvious practical special effects-driven storytelling – yet it remains just as pathetic, exceedingly cheesy in its supernatural filmmaking trappings. Maybe there is such a thing as Mexican horror telenovela and I’m not aware of it, but if such a notion exists in terms of cinematic genre, then god save us because it’s appalling. Pedro Fernandez reprises his role as Julio, the loquacious young man obsessed with the occult, who by mere chance meets Mayra (played by the mononymously known Mexican pop idol Tatiana), a pretty, perky singer who invites Julio to her little sister’s birthday party to be held at her father’s (Joaquin Cordero) big movie studio. But as expected, during the Halloween-themed bash, the evil doll that is found as a prop in the movie studio, unleashes all hell. The film, from this turning point, shatters all structural logic and constitutes in its cutesy otherworldly panorama a nonsense too overwhelming to the extent of leaving so many loose ends that the puerile resolution in its final act proves to be one of the laziest deus ex machina I have ever seen in my entire movie-watching life. I get that the filmmakers’ overriding aim was to recreate the irrationality of hell on earth – or the temporal and spatial madness of a nightmare – but even the most asymmetrical horrors have an audiovisual rhythm that is what ultimately gives a film its shape. Everything here is shapeless, stilted and jerky.