Recently, Amazon added its Prime app to the Apple TV, which greatly increased the amount of content that I could view without having to pay additional money. Since I must have wished upon a monkey’s paw, that came with a horrible catch: limitless access to unnecessary sequels to crap movies. Since I must suffer through these movies, so shall you suffer through this new series: Crap Sequels to Crap Movies.
It’s hard to know where to begin with this movie because just thinking about it causes me immense pain. Never has a movie scrambled my brain this badly. Not even Christmas with the Kranks—a movie I loathe more than getting out of the shower only to realize that I don’t actually have a towel within grabbing distance.
In case you aren’t familiar with the premise of these movies, and in case you are somehow able to gather the details from the overly long title, Jack Frost is about a criminal with what appears to be the facial structure of Flapper from Big Bad Beetle Borgs being sentenced to death for public urination. He’s probably a murderer, too, but the movie only ever shows him being arrested for pissing off the side of a highway in Snoton (yep). On the midnight ride to wherever it is that they execute people here, a crash occurs and Jack Frost—no really, that is his name—escapes, gets sprayed with acid(?), melts into goo, then swears revenge on the sherif who arrested him as he caries out several murders and sexual assaults as a snow man.
In the sequel, they decided to take a page out of the Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian joke sequel/serious threat (depending on how desperate Tim Burton happens to be at the moment) and takes the sherif, his wife, and a couple of minor characters from the first film and transports them to a tropical island. Which tropical island? The movie isn’t too concerned, and neither should you.
Despite being made four years later, the effects are somehow even worse. The mini Jacks Frost appear to be made out of Play-Doh. Not clay or some sort of modeling foam, but rather, straight up white Play-Doh. Whereas the stories of Law & Order are pulled straight from the headlines, the CGI from Jack Frost 2 was pulled directly out of a scratched up PS1 disc retrieved from the desecrated remains of a Comp USA. Not to be outshined by the special effects department, the cinematography somehow manages to look even worse. Despite being digital, it appears to be shot on video, using Peter Jackson’s much maligned high frame rate camera. Even the inexplicable letter boxes that adorn the opening scene are full of artifacts. Yes, that’s right. The film can’t even nail flat, black boxes. What I’m trying to say is that the movie looked worse than walking corpse Steve Bannon. (Not to kink shame any of you necrophiliacs.)
Were it just the technical details that fail, this movie wouldn’t be so unwatchable. It’s the fact that everything else is also excruciating that makes this movie so bad. The original was garbage, but one thing it had going for it was its inventive killings. It would trick you into thinking a person would die a certain way, then the movie would dispatch of them in a much more elaborate, much more goofy fashion. Take the mother of the kid who had his head lopped off by a sled. The movie wants you to think she’s going to be electrocuted when she goes to fix the Christmas lights. Instead, Jack Frost sneaks up behind her, wraps her in lights, crushes an ornament in her mouth, and crucifies her on a tree. As I’m only moderately crazy, I never even considered that possibility!
The sequel lacks that element of surprise, with the exception of the woman who is killed by being crushed by an anvil made of snow. The rest are either routine stabbings, drownings, and dismemberments. Well, I take that back. One person’s head exploded for no reason when Jack Frost was suddenly a chest full of ice cubes. When did he gain that power, and why am I looking for any sort of logical explanation or consistency within a movie called Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Killer Mutant Snowman?
If you must watch a Jack Frost, watch the first one…but watch it with Rifftrax. Their jokes and editing make the movie almost bearable.
What have we learned
- Anti-freeze absorbs banana allergies.
- The Gullah Gullah Island set must have been very cheap to rent.
- I stole the basis for that last joke from my friend Grum before this movie nearly killed him.
- If your child makes you oatmeal with marshmallows, chocolate, and anti-freeze, and calls this concoction “special”, leave this kid at home when you go on an island vacation.
- Tropical resorts are known for their bottles of Asahi beer.
- Ladies, if you swim with your top off, some other woman will steal your bikini after you are murdered by a snowman.
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