Is it a good thing or a bad thing when a sequel to a movie that only came out in October gets announced? How about when that sequel comes out in December of the same year? Tubi is going for broke with the sequel to their remake of Terror Train this New Year’s Eve. The story picks up a year after the first film where a group of seniors in college was brutally murdered on the now infamous Terror Train. Alana (played by Robyn Alomar) returns with some of the other survivors on a New Year’s Eve ride on the same train, this time for a party atmosphere. You guessed it; it turns out that going back to the murder train brings out more murder.

Terror Train 2 was directed by Philippe Gagnon and written by Ian Carpenter and Aaron Martin. It also stars Tim Rozon, Nadine Bhabha, Romy Weltman, Tori Barban, Dakota Jamal Wellman, and Matthew Villeneuve. The biggest issue with Terror Train 2 is that it tries to set up Alana as brutally disturbed by her experiences from the first movie. She’s had breaks from college, she sees things while she’s doing medical assignments, she can’t eat, etc. But as soon as we get the setup and inciting incident for this film, that goes out the window. She’s not affected by her previous experiences, she doesn’t really learn anything. It’s just a flat character.

Her reasoning for going back on the train is even flimsier. If you had just gone through a murder spree, where your boyfriend and friends were killed, it would have to take a titanic event to get anyone back on the train. Here it’s some really flimsy coercion by her friend to get her back on the train for New Year’s Eve.

Stock Plot, No Reason For A Sequel, Unlikeable Characters

The other issue is that all of the characters are unlikeable. That’s a generalization in most movies, but here it’s the rule. Terror Train 2 goes for a bit of commentary on how social media has ruined people and that teens/college-aged people are more obsessed with fame than with empathy. That’s one of the nice things about the film. You do get to see irredeemable people getting murdered. The TikTok/Instagram stars of the film get butchered, but even then it’s not satisfying for the audience. The characters are more annoying than dastardly, so there’s no release for the audience when they bite the dust.

Terror Train 2‘s plot basically follows the slasher formula, but it doesn’t add anything that sequels normally do. It’s just a repeat of the first movie surrounding a different holiday. Even though it’s not on Halloween, there are still people dressed up in costumes. So, what’s the point then? I don’t know if this was filmed back to back with the first film or some similar arrangement, but that would make sense.

So does Terror Train 2 work in some comedically bad way? It doesn’t.

It has a lack of humor with some silly jokes thrown in and the commentary on social media life being a bit funny, but other than that, this is a lifeless sequel. The mystery surrounding who the new killer is doesn’t really land either. It’s not completely obvious, but there’s no weight to it at all in the story.

The gore in the film is all digital, and that’s even played up for a joke when someone is murdered on a live stream. Everything else is done digitally or off-camera so that there’s no work done. The kills aren’t inventive, it’s just axes, and knives, and the killer doesn’t play off like they’re menacing at all.

I usually try to find something redeeming about any movie, but Terror Train 2 doesn’t really do anything fun. It feels more like a CW version of a slasher movie. That might be good for some unintentional laughs, but even those can’t save Terror Train 2.

You can check out Terror Train 2 on Tubi on December 31st.

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