Basic training
I love the horror genre. Where else are you going to get a minor classic Jamie Lee Curtis slasher (Terror Train 1980) halfheartedly remade two and a half decades later (Train 2008) before actually being remade almost word for word by Tubi another decade and a half later (Terror Train 2022), at which point it only took about two and a half months for them to release a sequel? Whether or not the world should be getting Terror Train 2 is another question entirely, but against all the natural laws of the universe we have it, and I'm here to don my conductor's cap and review it, goddammit.
Terror Train 2 has one immediate and obvious advantage over Terror Train '22: it can carve its own path. Rather than being forced into following the exact same track of the original film but with added cell phones, this film is free to go careening off the rails and do its own thing. As the films were presumably shot back to back, we get the entire surviving cast returning here, including final girl Alana (Robyn Alomar), whose post-traumatic stress had made her last year of med school a bit of a bother, what with the melting down she does every time she sees a dead body.
The forces of fate - and her overbearing roommate Claudia (Nia Roam) - cause Alana to attend a New Year's Eve party on the exact same train where she was stalked during Halloween last year, where she reunites with the rest of the survivors. Two minor characters from the original - Pet (Romy Weltman) and Merry (Tori Barban) - have become social media influencers on a new app called MurderFiend that the movie sure thinks is a biting commentary on our culture's obsession with true crime, so they have teamed up with The Prez (Dakota Jamal Wellman) to host a party for some of their biggest fans.
Also on board are the adjunct final girl turned conductor Sadie (Nadine Bhabha) as well as The Magician (Tim Rozon), who arrives to re-spark the sexual chemistry between himself and Alana. Most of the new characters are just background noise, but two of the most important are the callous serial killer superfan Lucie (Lisa Truong) and the security guard XNDR (Ess Hödlmoser), who takes their job maybe a little too seriously. Oh, and a douchey guy named The Wil (Daniel Gravelle), who is almost entirely useless except for his Mad Max-esque nickname and the fact that he looks like Timothée Chalamet's long-lost stunt double.
Anyway, wouldja guess there's a new bloodthirsty killer on board with a particular eye on the survivors of the original film?
First things first. While it's not particularly incisive, I'm shocked the screenplay has anything to say at all, considering the fact that it's a sequel to a film that was content to point at the original Terror Train and go "yeah, what she said" for 82 minutes. It doesn't exactly scrounge up any insights into parasocial relationships and the way that screens and social media might encourage a detachment from violence, but it sure the hell is trying, and if nothing else it at least provides the murder mystery with a heaping helping of suspects.
But you can't have a murder mystery without a little murder, and there is very little to go around here. Fakey CGI blood aside, a couple of the sequences are fun but there are even fewer setpiece kills here than the previous film, and most of the best bloody moments occur early on in the proceedings. After that point, the film mysteriously changes track and starts shoving its killings demurely offscreen as if somebody who willingly sat down with Terror Train 2 might be too squeamish to see a torso being pierced with a knife for even a second.
At least the acting continues to be far above par from what one might expect from a film bearing the phrase "a Tubi Original" on its poster. Weltman can't exactly dig herself out from under the pile of post-Juno teenbabble the screenplay saddles her with, but the ensemble acquits themselves quite well otherwise. And while Rozon and Alomar have slightly flatter arcs this time around ("I am sad" to "I am mad" isn't exactly stretching their abilities), they still imbue their roles with a level of humanity that is gratifying.
At the end of the day, the fact that a two-months-later sequel to a streaming remake pushes itself at all to provide a satisfying viewing experience is probably too much to ask in the first place, so we should just be grateful they did. But the fact that it's trying at all just shows that the filmmakers know they should try, which makes it a little disappointing the film didn't push itself even further toward being something genuinely good.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
Terror Train 2 has one immediate and obvious advantage over Terror Train '22: it can carve its own path. Rather than being forced into following the exact same track of the original film but with added cell phones, this film is free to go careening off the rails and do its own thing. As the films were presumably shot back to back, we get the entire surviving cast returning here, including final girl Alana (Robyn Alomar), whose post-traumatic stress had made her last year of med school a bit of a bother, what with the melting down she does every time she sees a dead body.
The forces of fate - and her overbearing roommate Claudia (Nia Roam) - cause Alana to attend a New Year's Eve party on the exact same train where she was stalked during Halloween last year, where she reunites with the rest of the survivors. Two minor characters from the original - Pet (Romy Weltman) and Merry (Tori Barban) - have become social media influencers on a new app called MurderFiend that the movie sure thinks is a biting commentary on our culture's obsession with true crime, so they have teamed up with The Prez (Dakota Jamal Wellman) to host a party for some of their biggest fans.
Also on board are the adjunct final girl turned conductor Sadie (Nadine Bhabha) as well as The Magician (Tim Rozon), who arrives to re-spark the sexual chemistry between himself and Alana. Most of the new characters are just background noise, but two of the most important are the callous serial killer superfan Lucie (Lisa Truong) and the security guard XNDR (Ess Hödlmoser), who takes their job maybe a little too seriously. Oh, and a douchey guy named The Wil (Daniel Gravelle), who is almost entirely useless except for his Mad Max-esque nickname and the fact that he looks like Timothée Chalamet's long-lost stunt double.
Anyway, wouldja guess there's a new bloodthirsty killer on board with a particular eye on the survivors of the original film?
First things first. While it's not particularly incisive, I'm shocked the screenplay has anything to say at all, considering the fact that it's a sequel to a film that was content to point at the original Terror Train and go "yeah, what she said" for 82 minutes. It doesn't exactly scrounge up any insights into parasocial relationships and the way that screens and social media might encourage a detachment from violence, but it sure the hell is trying, and if nothing else it at least provides the murder mystery with a heaping helping of suspects.
But you can't have a murder mystery without a little murder, and there is very little to go around here. Fakey CGI blood aside, a couple of the sequences are fun but there are even fewer setpiece kills here than the previous film, and most of the best bloody moments occur early on in the proceedings. After that point, the film mysteriously changes track and starts shoving its killings demurely offscreen as if somebody who willingly sat down with Terror Train 2 might be too squeamish to see a torso being pierced with a knife for even a second.
At least the acting continues to be far above par from what one might expect from a film bearing the phrase "a Tubi Original" on its poster. Weltman can't exactly dig herself out from under the pile of post-Juno teenbabble the screenplay saddles her with, but the ensemble acquits themselves quite well otherwise. And while Rozon and Alomar have slightly flatter arcs this time around ("I am sad" to "I am mad" isn't exactly stretching their abilities), they still imbue their roles with a level of humanity that is gratifying.
At the end of the day, the fact that a two-months-later sequel to a streaming remake pushes itself at all to provide a satisfying viewing experience is probably too much to ask in the first place, so we should just be grateful they did. But the fact that it's trying at all just shows that the filmmakers know they should try, which makes it a little disappointing the film didn't push itself even further toward being something genuinely good.
Brennan Klein is a millennial who knows way more about 80's slasher movies than he has any right to. He's a former host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast and a current senior movie/TV news writer at Screen Rant. You can find his other reviews on his blog Popcorn Culture. Follow him on Twitter or Letterboxd, if you feel like it.
