Toolbox Murders 2

 

I have to point out here at the beginning that I've never seen the original Toolbox Murders or even the Tobe Hooper remake, so I have no legs to stand on when it comes to this possibly shitty sequel simply titled Toolbox Murders 2. And I say "possibly shitty" because, again, I haven't seen the other two so I don't really have a base to spring from, but they have to be better than what unfolds here. This entry delves very deep into the extreme side of gory horror, and if you watch the actual cut, not the "Coffin Baby" cut, then you're going to be in for a nasty fucking bloodfest of psychotic serial killer proportions. I like reading and watching documentaries about those weirdo's-I don't want to actually see them commit the acts. The psychological aspect of those monsters is way more interesting than what they have actually committed, and the antagonist here is no different. This guy is fucking brutal and doesn't hold back at all in terms of sawing limbs off, sawing people in half while they are alive with a table saw, using a blowtorch to burn people, slicing off the flesh of someone while they watch as they're own skin is being cooked in a skillet for breakfast. Coffin Baby doesn't give a good shit about anyone or anything here, and it's utterly repulsive. I'm not opposed to extreme violence or heavy gore in any horror flick if it's done right, but here in Toolbox Murders 2 I felt the whole way through that it was done just for the sake of it and really didn't punctuate much of anything besides it being stylized to make him out to be the sickest bastard this side of Dahmer or Ed Gein. I'm pretty sure that was the whole point, and it was achieved greatly. The massive let down for this film though is that once you make it to the end credits, you still really don't know much of anything aside from feeling filled up with the rage of not knowing why any of this took place-nothing is explained about Samantha and her sister, nothing is explained about why Coffin Baby is doing what he's doing and nothing is brought out about literally anything. This is an unnecessary sequel that was just a cash-grab to prey on the horror community, and I don't know if it sold well enough to make a profit, but I honestly kind of hope it didn't. There was no reason for this.

Samantha has been kidnapped and locked in a cage in a dingy basement with absolutely nothing. No food, no water, no communication and no hope. The entire movie is basically her having flashbacks of what happened before she was kidnapped and goes through this whole ordeal having to watch Coffin Baby chop people up in various ways with actual tools from a tool box, and slowly loses her mind from day to day. She ends up throwing up bile from not eating anything for multiple days, tries eating a cockroach, eats her own hair at one point and just isn't a normal human being by the time this shit is over. You can't blame her. Eventually at some point she gets so hungry that she willingly takes some seared meat from a pan that Coffin Baby is cooking stuff in, and wouldn't you know it-it's fucking human flesh! What a damn surprise! And she even gets to watch him slice the skin off of some blonde chick's leg that he captured in a big white bag, and has her chained to the table with the saw. I will state here that the music is actually very fitting with a Ministry/Prong kind of vibe going on with it which fits the psychosis and uneasiness of the film entirely and the cinematography is actually very clean and well put together and adds great punch to the overall proceedings. There's no shortage of sickness here and there's a few frames where it honestly felt like I was looking at the live version of a Cannibal Corpse album cover (which, I mean, Cannibal Corpse is a kick ass death metal band) where there are just bodies, severed heads and limbs all over the place and blood splattered in grotesque patterns all over the walls to complete things. If all you're looking for is just insane amounts of brutal gore, you'll find it here. There was even a couple of scenes where I felt like I couldn't eat anything while watching this so there's that too. It reaches for the stars in terms of gross violence, and does it wonderfully.

Starting off with a scalping. I'm sorry, a box cutter defacing.

I have to say-I'm pretty impressed with this violent and gory stop motion in the intro here.

Okay, this bald dude needs to stop with the sexual fetishes.

Yo sista' be dead.

So, this homeless dude was tossed into the windshield of a cop car and his head was sawed off, and the cops weren't watching?

There's someone in that bag, isn't there? Yep.

Why stop at cutting off one leg when you could do both? That's just lazy.

Fuck that-don't eat one of the roaches.

It's probably not the breakfast you think it is, it's probably dead people parts.

Yep, it's cannibal shit.

There's the guy with the stupid hat.

I think Samantha is going to need a lot of counseling now after being kidnapped and locked up for multiple days while watching people getting cut up with a table saw and eating popcorn.

Zits and zombies, Toolbox Murders 2 is just here as a torture porn gore-fest to try and cash in on the original and remade name sake of The Toolbox Murders. This piece was highly unnecessary on pretty much every level and has no reason to have ever been made, but here it is. I stated at the beginning of this review that I've never even seen the original or the remake, and I have a feeling that they are both vastly superior to this dump. This actually kind of makes me want to watch both of those just to see if this one even remotely has anything to do with either of them, and since I'm a realist, they probably don't. Maybe Coffin Baby is a returning psycho serial killer villain from either or both of those, but I don't know for sure. All I know is that, once again (and I have been watching a lot of these lately it seems like) that this is a heavy handed purgatory flick. I see absolutely no reason to revisit this unless maybe you feel like taking it upon yourself to have a marathon one day of watching all three Toolbox Murder movies in one day, but why the hell would you do that. Probably for the same reason that I've attempted to watch all the Texas Chainsaw movies in a row, and failed miserably. Mainly because the franchise is much bigger than this trilogy and because that franchise has a lot more bullshit to wade through. The swamp gets pretty deep, my friend-and so does Toolbox Murders 2. Put your hogging boots on because it's time to go fishin'.