2 out of 5

Director: Hideshi Hino

DOUBLE the reviews of Guinea Pig 1… surely it’s twice as good? Yeah, well. With all films, I generally try to ask what the filmmakers were hoping to achieve and whether or not they succeed. GP 2 comes right out and says that it’s fake – that this is a “recreation” of a video someone else received. So we can assume (as, I guess, Charlie Sheen did) that this is fact attemptedly passed off as fiction, or we can assume the makers know you know and so – to paraphrase Always Sunny – are just going for gasps. So how does it do? Okay, I guess. The prosthetic work is on par with the original, and by ditching the pseudo-real concept, the film can just go for broke with the weird, having an ugly guy dress up in a samurai outfit to cut up a drugged woman and quote haikus here and there. It ditches the verbal abuse of GP 1, which is good, and lets our “lead” ham it up by sniffing and licking the parts he’s severing. This is more, uh, entertaining than GP 1, because it seems to have a logical start and end – in as much as you can say something like that – but it’s still pointless. I’m also confused how maggots crawling on body parts are supposed to be disturbing after watching this girl get hacked to pieces over 40 minutes. I gave GP 1 two stars b/c it’s approach was unique in its own way. Even though GP 2 is more “watchable,” it is less original, but I’m again allotting it two stars because the sound effect used for the bone cutting made me cringe, so… goal achieved, I suppose. And I also laughed during the eyeball sucking because it was so ridiculous. Thanks for the memories…?