Customer Reviews

The Mangler 2

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Is this horror movie for you? To find out, simply ask yourself these following questions:

1. Do you find the image of wires slowly stretching across a floor to be particularly terrifying?
2. Do you have no problem believing hackers can easily buy viruses off the website named "Hacker Mall"?
3. Do you enjoy "Spice Girls" songs being referenced almost 10 years after they were relevant?
4. Do the words "You've Been Mangled" appearing on a PDA display send chills down your spine?

If you answered "Yes" to any of those questions, then this movie is for you. In fact, if you enjoy movies that are so bad, they're hilarious, then this movie is for you, too!

Here's the <SNICKER> "plot" Jo (played by the talented Chelse Swain, who deserved so much better) is an angry teen who is enrolled at Royal Collegiate College! (Did she also go to High School School???). What she's angry about, we're never really sure. So she downloads a virus named "MANGLER 2.0" into the school's high-tech computer system. The virus then uses the computer system to slowly (very slowly) kill off the 5 or 6 people who are still in the school. The virus also falls in love with Jo (no, I'm not joking), because Jo gave "birth" to it... which is kind of an odd statement since Jo didn't create the virus, she only downloaded it from a hacker web site. Will Jo make it out alive??? More importantly, will you stay awake long enough to find out???

Where do I even begin??? How about the fact that almost all of the kills happen off-camera, including the guy who was killed after computer wires wrapped around gardening shears and slowly picked them up... (Yes, you read that correctly) And the ways people die... burned to death by a sprinkler system... jumping up and down on an electric fence yelling "It's safe"... Then there's the various "in-joke" references, like when the Mangler tells an African-American student that the black guy doesn't always die first! That was so clever...back in the late 90's when Scream 2 did the same joke! But it was still better than hearing the Mangler actually say "TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, WHAT YOU REALLY, REALLY WANT!" Make it stop...

And how do you make a bad movie into an even worse DVD? How about accidently omit a scene where a major character dies??? Thes a moment where the teens are running in a gym, then the screen goes dark. Next thing you know, they're all outside talking about their murdered friend. At first I thought I had a defective copy, but now I find out other DVDs had the same glitch! HOW DO YOU ACCIDENTALLY OMIT AN ENTIRE SCENE???

The only saving grace is Chelse Swain, who does give an effective performance, despite her character being so unlikeable, and having to say ridiculous lines like "I have to find order in my chaos"! Other than that, all you get is a boring story moving with one-dimensional characters who suffer lame kills (a couple of which are actually seen). Only rent this one if the video store is out of "Plan Nine From Outer Space"!

To be totally forthcoming, I only watched the first third to half of the film. However, I feel pretty confident that that does not preclude me from saying, with confidence, that this is one of the worst movies in recent memory. Compared to this movie, Jeepers Creepers 2 becomes "Hamlet" and Halloween V becomes Citizen Kane. At least these movies appear to have come from a studio. This film appears to have been made with a camcorder and edited on a home computer--sort of like the Ghost Ship imitator called Ghost Rig (no, I'm not kidding--it's real) and other stuff by that same studio, except actually worse.

Everything that could conceivably be wrong with a movie is wrong with this one. I think they were going for eighties brat-pack-revival horror. However, instead, there is a definite air of community access television/high school television production class project about this movie. The movie is many things, but scary and suspenseful are not among them. The first hour or so of the movie is dedicated to introducing one of the main characters in ways which are completely unnecessary. The premise (and I'm not ruining anything for you, because there isn't anything to ruin) revolves around a disgruntled teen heiress with hacking skills who downloads a virus in order to disrupt the computerized security system of the prep school at which her father has imprisoned her out of general desire to be a troublemaker. The virus then turns out to be murderous, presumably sentient. However, rather than having the computer kill people in ways which one would expect a computer to do so (see: Feardotcom, in which an evil website somehow caused viewers to drop dead after viewing after evil energy from the killing of innocent women was somehow tapped into by a serial killer), wires and garden shears (I *think* that was what they were) and other stuff are actually coming out of the computer to kill people. As Butthead once informed Beavis, "These effects aren't very special."

The acting is atrocious. Not just wooden. Not just melodramatic. Atrocious. We have actors stumbling over their lines in scenes that should have been reshot, and I seriously think the school headmaster character, for one, was actually reading his dialogue from a prompter given his complete lack of intonation.

If this happens to come on HBO or something, watch it for about ten minutes, if you can withstand that much, to see what I mean. Under no circumstances should you rent or buy this movie. Even if it is $.99.

Why Stephen King would even let someone use the title of his short story for this supposed "sequel" is a mystery to me. This movie is so lamebrained and contrived, dull and lifeless, acted by a troupe of pretty awful actors, including the usually dependable Lance Henriksen. Other than Will Sanderson, the rest of the cast is really, really bad...especially the lead character of Jo. The movie seems to exist only to show off some buff bodies and watch them run throughout the building in slow mo; the director also liked using that filming the same shot from minutely different angles, for what purpose, only he can tell. The extras interview this bunch of clowns, and director/writer Michael Wright looks and acts like some high school drama teacher; they also spend time saying how many "weird" things happened during the filming. I certainly wouldn't make the mistake I did and buy this clunker!!!

One doesn't have to look hard to find a better movie than The Mangler 2. I would bet that closing your eyes and grabbing a movie off the shelf is a safer bet. That said, if you're up early in the morning and it shows up on tv, watch it if there's absolutely nothing better on. This movie is as absolutely corny as 'horror' can get, but it doesn't aim any higher than the bottom of the bargain bin. This is a late nite piece of trash that doesn't take into account any remote sense of logic, but that is its charm. It's sorely predictable, yet fun. I found it so extraordinarily ridiculous that it was worth waiting through the dribble for the next insanely contrived death scene. Just when you think the plot can't possibly get any worse, it does. So, if for some reason you don't mind sitting through cliche after cliche, watch this movie, but dear god do not pay any money for it.

For *good* trash see any Troma or Fulci movie.

"I didn't think the virus was going to kill us"

Yes, this is an actual quote from Mangler 2, the [worst] movie I have ever seen. The premise of the movie: Cords come out of a computer and kill people. Wow. I mean, I am utterly amazed at the complete stupidity of this movie. I know sequels are always worse than the original, but this movie is worse than Rocky 5. I am still blown away with this movie. Wow.

A glittery unicorn runs through a field of kelly green clover. Dorothy dances in her ruby red slippers. Jack chops down the tangerine colored beanstalk, but the giant survives the fall and he and Jack run off and buy furniture from Ikea. A chocolate ice crean cone melts on a sidewalk under a hot sun in July. Robin Hood shoots an arrow through Maid Marion's left eye.

If the above seems like nonsense, (these scenes do not occur in the movie but are no better or no worse than anything in the movie. The mangler in this mess is a computer virus and the killer is cable wire) let me go a step further....Robin Hood shoots an arrow through Maid Marion's left eye, and most of all, "The Mangler 2" SUCKS!!!!!!!!!

The hi-tech security system of an exclusive private school begins offing the students and faculty after a troublesome teen injects "The Mangler" computer virus into the mainframe. After the computer absorbs the school's headmaster, the teens must fight to survive against a new virtual killer. THE MANGLER 2 is an in-name only sequel that bears little resemblance to the original film. Instead of a giant, menacing speed press that splatters its victims in a metal bloodbath, the majority of the deaths here occur off-screen and are committed by a rouge set of electrical wires that haunt the halls of the high school. Considering the date of its release, the cyber-terror technology is extremely dated and even laughable. Lance Henriksen's perfomance as Headmaster Bradeen is better than the film deserves, up until his weak transformation that recalls HELLBOUND's Dr. Channard. THE MANGLER 2 is a failed sequel to an already misguided film series that can easily be missed.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

Have you ever heard about those services that edit out all the "questionable parts" of a movie so that "moral, unpstanding" people can "enjoy" them? Have I used enough "Quotation marks" already in this "review"? I bring this up because this "horor" movie reminds me of one of those edited masterpieces after the editors have finished it off, except this movie was that bland and uneventful to begin with. I knew I was in trouble when the kids were joking about porn titles and they used the most hackneyed, unoriginal and tame parodies of porn titles I'd ever heard. Come on guys, you can't even think up an interesting or funny porn title parody? They used old ones that have been around for years. And they committed the cardinal sin of B-movies: It wasn't stupid, it was BORING!

And Oh Lance Henriksen! You used to make movies like "Man's Best Friend" and "Near Dark". Didn't anyone ever teach you to invest?

An insult to the Mangler series, to much techno running, some of the kills were cool ideas but all gore was cut out and it was done off screen....every kill was off screen actually....Come on morons it's a Mangler movie! Lance did his art well for what it was, but other than that this movie was kinda crap.

Well what can I say. I'm a fan of cheezy horror. I like cheezy horror. This movie was bad even by the standards of cheezy horror. It follows all the steriotypes to the letter and does so badly. I would not pay money to see it again.