Anna Two aka The Devil’s Fairground aka Freaky Links

Anna two starts off with something horrible happening in the dark. I’m not sure what, because it’s too dark. Flash over to a graveyard where our hero in glasses (Jacob, part of our pair of heroes from the previous film) is standing over someone’s freshly dug a grave. He then mournfully rides his bike off into the sunset. Or the credits. We appear to be in the middle of a pitch session for Freaky Links – the YouTuber’s site name. Flash back to the previous film, to get us context… But this time they’re off to a haunted amusement park… after the crashing a rival ghost hunters investigation.

Turns out, that this group, Spooky Links, used to work with them… They were all employed by Ryan, the gentleman in the grave from the beginning. He left the business and equipment a Spooky Links and Freaky Links are not real happy about that. But now they’re also trying to bury the hatchet, on the anniversary of Ryan’s death, and maybe recruit them to all work together to tackle the park.

They start things off with a stop along the way to visit a demon possessed girl. It kind of goes badly.. there’s blood on the ceiling, gory make up and several gags thrown in. Apparently you don’t make holy water just by soaking a Bible and a bowl of water…
I mean, you kind of can, but it seems to more just piss them off. They’ve definitely got the evil’s attention now, even as they defeat the possessed girl, the haunting follows them to the Local bar.

Anyhow it’s time to investigate the devils fairground.  

Inside, the fairground looks more like your local Haunted House than an actual amusement park. It’s ramshackle buildings with smoking lights and lots of bloody, grotesque monsters. Crumb is going for uglier and more shocking monsters than he’s ever done before. It’s all about imagery. Seriously, we’ve left story well in the rear view mirror. But something interesting happens around the hour mark.

We got some foreshadowing a while back about the ghost hunters wondering what ghosts really are… What happens when you cross over… That sort of stuff. The third act attempts to explore that, sending a team into Crumb’s vision of the netherworld. It’s a bold move, the sort of thing we see very rarely, Hellraiser two, or The Beyond. He attempts to pull this off with sheer audacity and force of will, and while he doesn’t entirely succeed, he doesn’t entirely fail either. It requires a normal suspension of disbelief, but at this point I’m kind of ready to cut him some slack. He also has a good sense not to linger too long before moving onto the next threat, and get back to ghost hunting.

Or is it that the ghosts are hunting them?

You know, this is actually a better movie then it seems like. It’s got flaws, massive flaws, but there’s some interesting stuff to unpack and you can actually see the development of Crum as a filmmaker. I kind of want to revisit around Halloween when I’m hitting the haunted houses, because the imagery is just so familiar. It’s one of those movies were I’d kind of like to see what he could do with a bigger budget, I think he’s almost ready for it.

 

 

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