The film is writer-star Marlon Wayans’ take on suburban ghost stories. Putting himself, a black man, at the center of that usually lily-white genre gives him a target-rich environment for broad, politically incorrect satire. The first entry in the series gave Wayans’ upwardly mobile new homeowner a head-spinning freak show of a girlfriend (we’ve all been there, am I right, guys?). Those demons banished, he takes another shot at suburban life with his new girlfriend (Jaime Pressly) and her two teenagers.
Once again the road to settling down and relationship-building is strewn with supernatural stumbling blocks. Wayans is repeatedly hypnotized by a chalk-faced, creepy-eyed antique doll whose erotic magic sends him into a mating frenzy, typically when Pressly or her kids are approaching the bedroom door. The star’s gymnastic, flesh-baring humping and randy pillow talk is funny at first. It’s not the kind of joke that improves with repetition, though. Wayans beats it to death, then to smithereens, then to dust motes.
To the limited degree that the film works, it’s thanks to the all-in commitment of the cast. In a Santeria blood sacrifice ritual, Wayans has to catch, pummel and slaughter a chicken that turns out to be remarkably uncooperative and tough. The scene is a master class in physically punishing, over-the-top slapstick.
Along the way, there are a plethora of tasteless jokes, a numbingly copious amount of profanity and use of the N word, allusions to body parts and bodily functions (including a particularly cringeworthy demonstration of such) and pop culture references that should have those mentioned steaming and (fingers crossed) planning to sue for emotional distress.
Wayans is front and centre throughout, mugging, flinching, sweating, screaming, gesticulating, gyrating, weaving and bobbing. It is excruciatingly painful to watch.Everyone else’s talents are similarly squandered, including Jaime Presley as his wife, Megan and Cedric the Entertainer returning from the first film as Father Williams, demonstrating once again why he should stick to game-show hosting.
Pressly is winning as Wayans’ oblivious, cougarish new squeeze. Gabriel Iglesias provides good-humored ethnic awkwardness as Wayans’ Hispanic neighbor and Cedric the Entertainer returns as a serenely sinful exorcist.
The film parodies a lot of movies that deserve it (its basic framework comes from the “Paranormal Activity” series, the doll from “The Conjuring”) and one or two that deserve better (the sublimely scary “Sinister” gets a thorough drubbing, turning its occult killer into an accident-prone klutz).
Irredeemably dreadful in every way, this is a film parents should actively discourage their children from seeing. Those who do find it entertaining should strongly consider seeking professional help. With a film this hauntingly bad, the most terrifying prospect imaginable is the possibility of A Haunted House 3.
The script is lazy, recycling countless genre clichés rather than inventing novel twists. The jokes aren’t just painted in broad strokes, they’re applied with a roller. But at least in one way, “A Haunted House 2” improves on the first entry in the series. That film had a long, gratuitous shot of Nick Swardson’s bare rump, a horror that the sequel spares us.
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