Witchboard 2: The Devil's Doorway (1993)

Writer/Director Kevin S. Tenney returns in this sequel to his 1987 original. Introducing new characters, this story centers around a young woman named Paige (Dolenz) who has left her boyfriend Mitch (Gibbs) to see if she is the artist she thinks she is. She rents an artist's loft to paint, but finds the Witchboard and begins playing it alone. She contacts the spirit of Susan (Julie Michaels) who was the former resident of her loft and heavy into the occult. Susan communicates to Paige that she was murdered which causes Paige to do some checking on her own of Susan's death. Paige slowly becomes obsessed with the case and the board and gets caught in progressive entrapment like Lynda from the original film did. Unlike the original film in this series, Tenney makes this a story of revenge with Susan's spirit doing the dirty work. Along the way she takes out a handyman and his stuck in the 60's wife Elaine (Newman) in grisly fashion. Elaine's death could be the best of the movie has a giant wrecking ball smashes her into and through her VW Bus she's standing in front of. Like in the original, Tenney has is camera swoop around the apartment in wide angle to show the point of view of the spirit, and once again it is effective. Composer Denis Michael Tenney delivers a well done score that enhances the action on screen. Some good jump scares are included in the form of some intense dream sequences, but some of the original films atmosphere is sadly missing. The revenge plot line just doesn't allow for as many scare opportunities as the first film did. Still, this sequel is a worthy effort and Tenney supplies some good supernatural moments to entertain and scare the audience. There is a great final scene which involves the first films star Todd Allen playing Jim with his friend, also from the original Kenny Rhodes as Mike as garbage men as Jim is telling Mike that Linda just had a baby and they named it Brandon. Cool homage to the original.

"Get a grip, Paige, it's only a Ouija Board." From the director of Night of the Demons and the first Witchboard, is this '93 sequel featuring the gorgeous Ami Dolenz as an amateur artist, Paige, moving into an attractive loft so she can hopefully make a career out of painting while working unhappily at a business to pay the bills. When she dabbles with a Ouija board, found in a closet (it falls in a spot so she can visibly see it), the spirit of a former occupant wants her, Paige assumes, to find her body and the murderer responsible. The question: is there more to this than meets the eye? Could a desire to possess Paige be part of why she keeps motivating her to use the Ouija board? Other characters involved in the mystery regarding the spirit of Susan (Julie Michaels) include a photographer, Jonas (Christopher Michael Moore), the brother of apartment renter, Elaine (Laraine Newman, of Saturday Night Live fame), still living in the 60s (she has a hippy-painted van, dresses and speaks as if she were stuck in a timewarp). Mitch (the bo-hunk Timothy Gibbs) is Paige's former lover, a plain-clothes policeman with bitterness due to her leaving him for being too bossy and pushy. Tenney does use special effects as he did in the first Witchboard to convey Susan's abilities to affect her surroundings when Paige is using the Ouija board (a broken mirror, operating a crane which sends a wrecking ball crashing into a vehicle crushing a victim, and pressing down the accelerator pedal of a Ford Ranger that nearly kills Mitch in Tenney's French Connection sequence of the film). Also a Tenney trademark is the Evil Dead "bird's eye view" camera shot—in this movie's case, from the Point of View of Susan moving about in spirit form—still in effect here as has been used in times past (preferably Night of the Demons and Witchboard, arguably his two best films). Tenney tries to shoot the adorable Dolenz (boy, did I have a crush on her when I was a teenager!) in sexy, provocative ways, and does, at times, succeed. She does have a potty mouth once the Paige character becomes more reliant on the Ouija board, soon quite addicted to solving the mystery of her death, placing her own body in jeopardy of a total takeover. Most unintentional funny scenes (maybe they were intentionally funny, I don't know) have the first victim trying to evade a spinning saw blade in flight, chasing (!) after him and this very same victim succumbing to a boiler that actually balloons as if it become bloated, resulting in a steam kill! Dolenz is actually not a bad lead heroine, her smile is a knock-out and she exudes a pleasant enough personality, but I found Gibbs' cop a hard character to like (he tries, later after reflection, to be more understanding and seems committed to a better relationship with her, but his initial scene does not necessarily warm us to him; his aggressive nature and aura of hostility are especially noticeable), even though he factors heavily into Paige's rescue. One things for certain, Mitch is quite a punching bag thanks to Susan's supernatural powers. Newman does what she can with a caricature, actually still quite amusing during many of her scenes. Moore is the other man in Paige's life, and his character (much to the film's credit) can not be pinned down as completely innocent, although he's far more easy to like than Mitch.

Yes, I'm only giving this a 4/10 but I still enjoyed watching this movie, and if crappy horror movies are your thing, then you'll have to watch this too.Anyway, there really, really, really needed to be more boobs in this movie - there wasn't any! The main character girl appears kinda sexy in some scenes, but that's it. She wears the exact same clothes during a large portion of the movie too, its weird, it clearly was a few days in the film and she still is wearing the same clothes, idk wtf up wit dat. Also, it would have been better with a lot more gore, there really isn't any until the end. And her voice gets really annoying. The worst part by far is the guy who played Russell, wow he sucks! His acting is by far the scariest thing in this movie.

Witchboard 2This movie has plenty of entertainment stuffed into it's 90 minute running time, but it isn't too scary. Witchboard 2 is about Paige, who moves into an artist loft apartment after leaving her boyfriend. While moving in, she finds a Oujia board inside a closet, and just for fun, begins to play around with it. But you can't play with a Witchboard as Paige soon learns, when she contacts the spirit who claims to be a former tennant of the apartment complex who was murdered. Then, people in the complex begin dying in weird ways, and Paige must uncover the spirit's true identity before it destroys her.The actors here aren't too bad, and Laraine Newman is hilarious as the eccentric landlord. This film has some 'jump' sequences that jolt you, but no real horror to scare you with. The movie also has a good mystery to it. Good for horror fans, and not cheesy at all. Don't expect a super-cheapy movie, it isn't that bad. 8/10.