Demons 2 (1986)

Here's the thing about sequels to cult horror films: they rarely capture what made the original work, and more often than not they just point a camera at a similar situation and hope the audience is too distracted by the gore to notice. Demons 2 is guilty of exactly that. It's not a terrible film, but it's a lesser one, and that gap between what it is and what it could have been is hard to ignore.

I reviewed Demons and came away genuinely impressed by the grimy, relentless energy of it. A cinema full of punters slowly turning on each other, a synth-soaked soundtrack, and a real sense that the filmmakers were having the time of their lives making something nasty. It had personality. Demons 2 has the same basic recipe but none of the same flavour. The setting shifts from a Berlin picture house to a high-rise apartment block, with the demonic outbreak spreading through a live television broadcast. It's actually a decent concept, the idea of infection leaping through the screen into your living room has a kind of media-paranoia poetry to it. But the execution doesn't earn that premise.

Lamberto Bava directs this one, with Dario Argento in the producer's chair rather than behind the camera, and you feel that change almost immediately. The stylish dread is gone. What replaced it is glossier, louder, and a fair bit sillier. The set-pieces feel more like a zombie home invasion than anything rooted in genuine supernatural unease. Characters tear through the building, bite each other, scratch each other, infect each other, and the whole thing escalates into chaos without ever building any real tension. It's messy in a way that isn't particularly interesting.

The demonic makeup holds up in places, I'll give it that. There are moments where the practical effects work is impressive enough to earn a wince or a laugh of disbelief. But the characters are so thinly drawn that you barely register them before they're either screaming or clawing at someone's face. Pacing is the real problem. The middle section drags badly, and when the finale finally descends into full-blown apocalyptic mayhem, there's a kind of trashy fun to it, but you've had to sit through a lot of wheel-spinning to get there.

I don't want to be too hard on it. Watched in the right mood, with the right company and maybe a few drinks, there's entertainment to be found here. It knows what it is. It's not trying to say anything, not trying to frighten you in any lasting way. It wants rubbery monsters, people screaming on television, and enough gore to keep genre fans happy. On that narrow brief, it occasionally delivers. The final act, all escalating madness and practical monster work, has the kind of go-for-broke energy that makes 80s Italian horror worth seeking out in the first place. If you've got any appetite for this kind of thing, think of Nightmare City, you'll find something to enjoy.

But enjoyment isn't the same as quality, and Demons 2 is a by-the-numbers follow-up that exists primarily because the first film made money. The sleazy, urgent magic of the original is nowhere to be found. The atmosphere has been swapped for gloss, the dread for noise, and the result is a film that's passable on a Friday night and pretty much forgettable by Saturday morning.

Two and a half stars. Worth a watch if you're already a fan of the first, but don't go in expecting anything more than grim laughs and rubbery chaos.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 1986  | Watched: 2025-08-17

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Watch in the UK
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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Lamberto Bava: Demons (1985)
More from Italy: Nightmare City (1980) · Cemetery Man (1994) · One Way or Another (1975) · Chicken for Linda! (2023)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)