Back in 2020, Shudder’s very meta horror comedy Scare Package took the streaming service by storm and flipped a lot of fun horror tropes and cliches on their heads.  It even debuted on an episode of The Last Drive In with Joe Bob Briggs with the titular host even showing up in the movie itself.  So with that kind of buzz, it was only natural that a sequel was inevitable (as is usually the case with the horror genre).

Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge gives a few more fun and self-aware horror vignettes, although its wraparound story feels more like outright parody than satire, and its collection of segments aren’t as numerous as before.  But there’s a lot to enjoy!

Funeral Games
Following Chad’s death, the funeral-goers are forced into a Saw styled game where they must use their horror movie knowledge to escape.  All the while, vignettes play for them on the TV.  We get a fun deconstruction of slasher final girl tropes, a cross parody of Stand By Me and Re-Animator, as well as a genuinely fun and satirical take on the “ghost” urban legend from Three Men and a Baby that feels in line with The Ring.

We don’t get as many stories as we did in the first movie, but the ones here are unique and creative enough to keep things fun and interesting.  Also, once again this movie delivers on some amazing practical prosthetic and gore effects that really demonstrate how much heart and soul the makeup FX team put into their creations.  When you’re dealing with ultra low budget like this, it’s always refreshing to see practical effects rather than CGI being used.

Diminishing Returns?
The first Scare Package film was a lot of fun and very much knew exactly what it was.  It was intentionally campy with tons of jokes thrown in there but it had just enough charm that it never got too ridiculous or stopped being fun.  A lot of the jokes and moments in this sequel feel like you had to have watched the first one, and by no means is that a criticism.

That being said, there does seem to be a few inside jokes that clearly the filmmakers had a blast doing while filming, but don’t necessarily translate over to the audience.  At other times, the movie feels like it’s trying way too hard and is just making meta references for the sake of doing so, rather than making any real interesting or clever commentary.

Again, the original film had the novelty of being the first one thus many of its ideas and jokes felt very fresh.  We got plotlines like werewolves being killed by chocolate and a slasher villain prepping for the big day, and it just feels like this one was made because of the success of the first.  But in a strange way, this one not being as good as the first, kind of fits a larger meta joke about the nature of sequels.

Mixed Bag
Out of all of them “Special Edition” and “The Night He Came Back Again! Part VI: The Night She Came Back” do the best job at satirizing what they’re going for.  The former takes the internet’s obsession with movie urban legends and runs with it into absurdist territory.  And the latter is just a ridiculous over the top parody of how ridiculous and over the top continuity’s can become in long-running slasher franchises that were never really meant to go beyond one movie.

“Welcome to the 90s” and “We’re So Dead” both have entertaining and enjoyable moments, but they both feel more like they’re just imitating rather than actually satirizing.  That and the Saw wraparound story gets old after a little while.  It might have worked as just one of the stories, but when you keep coming back to it, all it’s really doing is the same joke over and over.

Just to be clear, Scare Package II is still a lot of fun, and if you go in with the right expectations, you’ll probably enjoy it.  The first one didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but it did feel like a breath of fresh air that’s just difficult to capture again with a sequel born only from its predecessor’s success.

What did you think of Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge?  Let us know in the comments!

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