Trancers 2 (1991)

Director: Charles Band
Starring: Tim Thomerson, Helen Hunt, Jeffrey Combs, Richard Lynch, Martine Beswicke, Alyson Croft, Megan Ward, Barbara Crampton

SYNOPSIS

Jack Deth has been living his life stuck back in the late 80s, but a new war with the trancers is expected, and he's wanted back. The first agent they sent – his dead wife, transported the day before she died – has disappeared

REVIEW

Back in the 1980s, Charles Band was a promising new producer and director whose company Empire Pictures was putting out low budget but enjoyable and imaginative movies like Re-Animator, Ghoulies, Troll and TerrorVision. Unfortunately, a few flops and reduced theatrical distribution for independent features led to Empire's collapse. Band soon bounced back however, with Full Moon Pictures, a direct-to-video label specialising largely in horror movies. The history of that studio soon becomes depressing, unfortunately, with a focus on merchandising and ever decreasing budgets led to a lot of filler and very bad movies, although the studio has its fans.

But, the start of its history was promising, combining movies like Puppet Master with film like this – a sequel to one of Empire's most successful movies. It's a reasonably entertaining sequel that manages to cram in a lot of ideas and well shot sequences despite clearly being on a very low budget. It has a similar light-hearted tone to the original, as well as retaining some of the most amusing aspects of that film (such as the “long second” watch, which allows a single second to stretch over 10 second for the wearer, to amusing results).

As well as a reasonably enjoyable script, there's an excellent cast. While only one actress (Hunt) managed to break into the big time, almost every cast members does a decent job. Genre favourites such as Lynch and Combs populate the lower ranks of the cast, while Thomerson does a great job as ever as our protagonist. The script does a great job of introducing concepts to new viewers, while retaining consistency for those who have watched the original. For example, when Jack's boss McNulty needs to travel back to see him, he once again has to use the body of his female ancestor – now 15 instead of 9 years old – while we're given a fairly reasonable reason why a physical chamber needs to be used to get Jack back this time and thus provide the McGuffin that drives the plot.

Overall, it's a fairly entertaining movie that won't blow any minds, but provides a good example of why the pre-Romanian filler material Full Moon will be sadly missed.