Michael_Elliott
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2 (1996)* (out of 4) Sequel to the 1986 masterpiece picks up slightly after that film ended. Henry (Neil Gluntoli) finds himself homeless but picks up a job in a small town. A husband and wife takes him into their home and soon the husband and Henry are on a murdering rampage. HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, PART 2, somehow, has a fairly good reputation among people but I found the film to be quite horrid from start to finish. I'm not going to lie, I really didn't go into this picture expecting anything like the original. The original film was one of the greatest of its type so it's impossible for this thing to match up to it and especially since we've got a new cast, production crew and director. The problem I had with this film is that it's basically just a remake of the first picture with a few changes made. There's no question that Henry and the "new" husband are just carbon copies of what we got in the original film. There's a young "troubled" woman here who is just a slightly different version of Becky from the first picture. The entire film has a very cheap feel to it and, unlike the original, that's not a good thing. Very little is done here and the entire story just struck me as pretty stupid. The entire business scheme of the husband and Henry setting places on fire just went nowhere interesting. The murder rampage that the two go on is, you guessed it, just a cheap rip-off of the original. None of the violence here is shocking or very interesting. There's quite a bit of gore but it too never gets all that exciting. The performances themselves weren't that bad but you shouldn't be expecting Oscar-caliber performances. HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, PART 2 is a pretty poor film simply trying to cash-in on a popular movie.
hokeybutt
HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER 2- MASK OF SANITY (2 outta 5 stars) Uh, long enough title, you think? First things first: this movie is one of those In Name Only sequels... and has practically nothing to do with the original classic. It hasn't got the same writer, director, actors or even the same style. This film is of a distinctly lesser quality in every respect. (This movie has some of the absolute WORST, fakest fight choreography I have ever seen!) Neil Giuntoli stands in this time for Michael Rooker (the original Henry) and, while he has a couple of effective scenes of underlying, stoic menace, for the most part he doesn't make much of an impression. This time around Henry is on his own and looking for work. He gets a job cleaning and moving port-a-potties and makes fast friends with a co-worker, Kai (Rich Komenich). Kai and his very un-happy-looking but smolderingly sensuous wife (Kate Walsh) invite Henry to stay with them until he gets some money put together. They also have an emotionally unstable niece (Carri Levinson) who draws freaky pictures. You think, with the two women in the house making googly eyes at Henry and carrying all that emotional baggage, that the tension would escalate into something really interesting. Well, you'd be wrong. Instead, Henry finds out that Kai does arson jobs for extra cash and the two of them get sidetracked into burning down old buildings for awhile. Then Henry starts into his killing spree again, slowly involving Kai more and more. The finale is a big disappointment in all respects... hardly touching on some of the more interesting elements introduced earlier in the movie. No wonder that there hasn't been a Henry 3.
a.north
This is nothing more than a series of badly staged violent scenes base around the perpertrators situation with his unfortunate house friends and the wider community.Apart from reasonable photography at times this picture has no merit which was annoying as the local T.V. guide gave it 5 stars!
Ivan Ravenous
Well, the original Henry is my all-time favorite movie, so I didn't think that a sequel could match it, and I was right. However, Henry 2 is not a bad film. It took two viewings, but the second time I enjoyed it much more because I was able to resist comparing it to the original. Henry 2 sucks by comparison, but if viewed as-is, it's perfectly capable of standing on its own. Michael Rooker is also my favorite actor, so I was not surprised to read many harsh critiques of Neil Guintoli's performance as Henry. It seems to me that, while no one could have played Henry better than Rooker, Neil Guintoli was a great substitute and should be recognized for that.
AD
