Everyone’s four favorite elderly’s return to once again do battle with another sinister force on all Hallow’s Eve, in ‘Boo 2! A Madea Halloween’. Written and directed by Tyler Perry, the film joins Madea (Perry), Bam (Cassi Davis), Viv (Chandra Currelley), and Hattie (Patrice Lovely) when they take a vacation to a campground with their family members. Unaware that the grounds are haunted, the group must band together to fight the terror, evil, and wacky hijinks of their mysterious opposition. When monsters, goblins, and the boogeyman are unleashed, Madea and company must fight it out with them in a laugh-out-loud battle to the death. ‘Boo 2! A Madea Halloween’ is rated PG-13 for sexual references, drug content, adult language and some horror imagery.

Going through back to back years with a Madea Halloween movie is a lot like getting over diarrhea and then coming back down with it only days later. It’s a real shitty time that keeps you planted for an excessive amount of time and stinks of the toxins that you put into your body. I apologize for the nasty description there, but ‘Boo 2!! A Madea Halloween’ is the perfect checklist for why Tyler Perry and I have been at odds since I began reviewing films in 2011. It’s without question Perry’s cheapest and least entertaining film to date, exchanging in the usual laughter involved in a comedic offering for shallow improv humor that stretches these scenes out longer than the pancake batter that Perry and friends don to immerse themselves in these truly wretched individuals. And there’s no benefit to ripping it to shreds even in the slightest. Making fun of a Tyler Perry movie is like making fun of a three legged dog who is humping a fire hydrant, it’s painfully low-hanging fruit that makes you feel stuck up for even having the audacity to rip it. I could think of much better ways to spend 96 minutes with my life, and most of them involve fitting myself for a noose and testing the strongest board in my house for durability. I didn’t think for a second that this film could possibly be worse than the original chapter that came out last year, but Perry proves once again that I should never doubt him when it comes to how truly low he will go.

First of all is the screenplay and material, or lack there of. So much of this script relies heavily on improv comedy to run up the clock and make the most out of basic outline drafting. When I really think about it, there’s only six different setting changes in this film, and while that may feel like a lot for an hour and a half, it is very minimal when you consider the progression that comes with multiple parties of characters and group conflicts. What this film desperately needs is an editor who doesn’t serve as a Perry enthusiast and straight up tells him when to cut the shit. Scenes drag on for an eternity, and while I remember this being a vital negative to my overall grade for the original movie, it doesn’t even make it into the top five of mind-blowing decisions that went into this production. The screenplay structure is basically the same as the first movie, proving just how little diversity went into this horror spoof that even lacks the kind of versatility for something in that putrid genre. I wouldn’t be surprised if this script was five pages long and used a lot of captions that involved the word IMPROVISE because it feels like Perry has no grip or enthusiasm to treat his audience to anything more, and why should he? this man continues to steal money from the pockets of his enthusiasts the same way that armed robbers do, except a robbery gives you the satisfaction of having an emotional response in being scared to death for your life.

So we know the comedy sucks, but what about the satisfactions with the genre it is spoofing; horror? Well, that direction doesn’t even take place until there is fifty minutes left in the movie, making the opening act and a half feel like you’re watching an entirely different film that just so happens to take place around this night of supposed terror. The shift from one tone to the next is so rough and jagged with the transitioning that there never is any defining moment of exposition when this takes place. As for the scares themselves, this cheap production makes the backdrops and landscapes of fog and woods feel so outdone and often times unrecognizable that I don’t fully grasp what particular movie that they are spoofing. There is a ‘Get Out’ reference that is seen in the film’s trailer, but with a few more of these clever instances, the film could’ve done a better job in subverting our attention to the waning interest in these sequences of the very cheapest denominator. Even for spoof or satire, ‘Boo 2’ offers very little to justify its existence, omitting the taste of a Madea movie that is being force-fed a Halloween motivation.

The performers who make up this complete ensemble offer nothing of any noteworthy praise or momentary break in monotony that they provide in their phoned in performances. This is definitely still Perry’s show, as he commands three different characters in the movie, but oddly enough for a movie that has her name in the title, Madea is relegated to kind of a supporting role in her own movie. A majority of what Perry puts his time and energy into is in the character of Joe, a horny, drug-smoking, horny, immature, horny, man-child who repeats the same few lines over and over to the point that I thought I was suffering from deja vu. In addition to Perry, his supporting cast of characters are equally as agitating. For whatever reason, Tito Ortiz is cast in this as Perry’s best friend, and if Tito is believable in just one thing, it’s that he is an MMA athlete who is trying to make the transition to film. His line reads lack any kind of commitment and visually give off the impression that he is holding in a fart so as not to ruin a scene that they have no money to waste. Yousef Erakat and his collective fraternity of date rapists made me uncomfortable in every stretch of the imagination. Seriously, every time these douchebags are on screen, it has the same feeling as the nerds from a Saved By the Bell episode, complete with cringe-worthy music that narrates every scene they choose to grace us with their sleazy romantic sides. My least favorite without question, yet oddly enough the only positive point that I can give this movie, is still Diamond White as Perry’s spoiled daughter Tiffany. If she does one thing well, it’s in the ability to invest your reasoning to the adults, because the way she treats her Father deserves an ass kicking. Characters like Tiffany are everything that’s wrong with today’s youth, and while she doesn’t do anything different from the oral garbage that she spewed just a film ago, White deserves all of the credit in the world for at least doing what the script asked of her.

All of what I’ve previously mentioned is a walk in the park compared to the cheap production qualities that completely make this film unwatchable for someone looking to escape into good times for even a brief amount of time. The lighting coming from windows surrounding our scenes ruin shots because their volume in brightness doesn’t register well on cheap camera equipment like this. What this does is give off several blurry scenes that are left in the film because they either had no time to reshoot, or they just didn’t have the motivation to fight it. But the most obvious error in this film is the handicap of its PG-13 rating that does no favor to the vicious ADR that takes place in this film. What I don’t understand is characters do cuss in this film. There’s an F-bomb, and several shits left in the line reads, but there’s so many curse words that are edited out of this movie without a smooth overlap that makes it beyond obvious. Think television edits when it comes to movies like ‘Snakes on a Plane’ or ‘The Breakfast Club’, but so much worse. The volume of the replacement word spikes so highly during their edits that you can’t help but notice their rocky inclusion when compared to the lips of characters who are obviously saying a word entirely different to that of what we’re hearing.

THE VERDICT – Any film with the word “Boo” in the title has some unbelievable balls to it. ‘Boo 2!! A Madea Halloween’ is a 96 minute Russian Roulette campaign that has Tyler Perry digging with a shovel to new lows in his already tumbling career. It’s obvious that this film was never going to be good, but the cheap production qualities and noticeable similarities in structure to its predecessor, breathe new life to the nightmares that Perry giftwraps to me every year without fail. What’s scary isn’t anything in the movie, but in the box office numbers that his fans will inevitably drive up, proving that dollar bills do float in toilet water.

2/10