When you do a sequel, there are positives and negatives. One of the positives is that in concept people will know what happened in the film beforehand. When you are doing the sequel to what might be termed a cult classic then this isn't quite as much of a positive. This means that much of your target audience may or may not have seen the first film. So you have a choice of either doing some sort of recap or going for an all new plotline.

While the original film, The Hidden, may not have achieved cult status, it definitely has some sort of a following. Personally I like it a lot and think that it has a lot going for it. The same can't be said for the sequel.

This movie seeks to both recap the first film, 'slyly' inserting a plausible new plotline into the mix. Unfortunately it does it extremely badly. The first fifteen minutes of the film is taken up by repeat scenes from the first movie (basically the last fifteen minutes of the first movie). Anyhow, minor spoiler warning here because I am going to have to give away a few plot points from the last film. I will try to give away as little as possible but it is going to be tough.

All right, quick recap of the first movie. The Hidden is about the hunt for an alien that has landed on Earth. This alien has the ability to take over a human's body (making that body extremely resistant to pain) and it uses this ability to experience things. Loud music, violence, sex, all of that sorta stuff.

Two investigators set out to stop the alien, one a human cop, the other an FBI agent (who is actually an alien, played by Kyle MacLachlan). The two of them bond in the pursuit of this nasty alien, chasing him from host body to host body until they finally...

But that would be telling. The Hidden 2 will tell if you watch it without seeing the original film first so be warned before you go and do that. I am gonna try to convince y'all that it isn't worth it even to watch it then though.

Anyhow, after featuring the fifteen minute repeat, the film quickly clears up loose ends (prior characters are killed off). It is also not a good sign when actors from the previous film do not choose to appear in the second, even for a quick cameo performance. Michael Nouri (Flashdance), who played Jeff Beck, the cop in the first film, does not come back, even though the character does come back. Anyhow, all of that is out of the way pretty quickly.

Oh yeah, the plot. Sigh. I was trying to avoid it really. OK. Before the flashback, a title card appears on the screen with bright green digital characters looking like something out of the eighties (kinda cheesy now). It looks like a message from Lloyd Gallagher (the character played by Kyle MacLachlan in the first film) to his base claiming that the alien might have spawned! Note that a secondary title for this film is Hidden II, The Spawning. Why he would write his message on a local computer with antiquated technology is beyond me but there it was.

During the flashback, a new scene is spliced into the footage to account for the new SPAWNING activity... Blah. I am just going to skip to the real opening.

After the tragic death of her father (Jeff Beck--I already mentioned him from the first film), Juliet Beck (Kate Hodge) is brought to identify the body. That doesn't even look like his corpse she exclaims. (Note that this is probably not an exact quote and also note that it isn't his corpse, or at least one played by the same actor. Eye-rollingly bad humor.) Well...

Skipping ahead a little bit, she is quickly introduced to a new alien hunter (Raphael Sbarge) who has travelled to Earth to stop the SPAWNINGS. In their opening conversation, they make several references to "hidden" things (when a film makes multiple references to its title, it isn't a good thing, the third bad sign that this is an awful film), eventually bond and have sex.

I am probably ignoring a bit in the whole relationship thing here but I don't particularly care at this point. The plot isn't really all that... OK, here is a hint of how wonky the characterizations are: the alien hunter doesn't really have a name! He is just referred to as MacLachlan in the credits. This is an obvious homage to Kyle MacLachlan who played the last alien. Juliet doesn't even bother to learn his name in any way shape or form.

Anyhow, after joining forces, the two of them set off to track down and kill the alien infestation.

While this was happening (and inserted in between the bonding, and sex parts somewhere), one of the spawns has proceeded to wreak havoc, going on a rampage with fast cars, etc. The rampage is terribly similar to the first one but this time it invades a rave (conveniently located next door to its hideout)...


This is the sort of sequel that really suffers in comparison to the first film. The opening of the first film was tremendous, first showing a bank being robbed from the perspective of a closed circuit camera, then zooming into the action of an alien causing havoc and mayhem. Great car chase scene showing just how crazy and indestructible the alien was.

This opening was just clonky in comparison.

Introducing the Alien Hunter

The introduction of the characters in the first film was also handled really well. The alien investigator is shifted into the action with a degree of finesse. We are introduced to him not knowing that he is an alien, only knowing that he is an FBI agent. The interaction between MacLachlan and Nouri was fun. They really didn't bond well at first but eventually did. The alien was just quirky enough to be interesting with subtly outrageous clues to show that he has no idea how to interact with the people of Earth (in one scene he is told how to operate an Alkaseltzer, he later tries the same method with an Aspirin).

The introduction for the characters in this one aren't handled at all well. The alien investigator here just up and reveals he is an alien. In the first conversation. Intro over. Yay.

The characters in this film just aren't as well done. I guess I would have to credit Kyle MacLachlan for the handling of the first alien because the writer, Jim Kouf (writing under the pseudonym of Bob Hunt), is the same for both pictures.

On the other hand, I would have to credit the writers and especially the new director for the handling of these characters.

Raphael Sbarge plays the alien as an affable sort of guy. I kinda liked the character as he played him but the dialogue was just atrocious. Sometimes he was knowledgeable about many things in the culture but at other times he was an annoying blank slate. Kinda like Starman combined with the alien from the last picture. The writers are just so incredibly sloppy with the picture, they use the same methods over again from the last film. The blank slate thing is demonstrated again over toiletries. Where before it was about Alkaseltzer, this time it is about brushing his teeth. It was just handled baaaadly. Juliet demonstrates to him how to brush his teeth because he had no idea. His generally affable nature also got in his way. The original alien hunter was understandably awkward around humans (having never been around them) while Sbarges just comes off as a nice sort of guy (who is a bit paranoid about aliens).

Juliet (Kate Hodge) isn't really a bad character either. She is just pretty generic. Hodge does make her likable but the part isn't something that anyone could really work with (unless you were totally ad libbing and even then I can't see much room for character growth).

The Evil Alien Body Changer

Here is an area that I think the original also excelled. Characterization of the alien. The alien switched bodies several times in the process of the first movie which drove the plot along at a pretty good pace. I was never quite sure what sort of twist was going to be put on the alien and it was really similar to the Terminator, a sort of frantic search.

Whenever the alien (in the first film) switched forms, mannerisms would be brought over to the new character. Licking lips, somewhat stiff posture, reptilian expressions... It was really fun to watch. It didn't hurt that one of the hosts was a stripper played by Claudia Christian either.

The alien in H2 just wasn't as consistent. Some of the actors seem to be trying to do their own version of the alien from the last film while others just don't. The alien doesn't even seem to function in the same way that the last alien did. It goes into a weird sort of torpor state part way through the film and this isn't really explained. I will say that I did like the alien performance by Tony DiBenedetto, who played a bum that was taken over by the alien. He managed to catch some of the mannerisms of the last alien pretty well.

Wake Up and Smell the '90's Technology?

Well, I don't exactly like that option on the pull down menus at the bottom here on Epinions but it sums up my feelings on the film's special effects pretty well. Note for Epinions though, the expression has lost something now that it isn't the '90's.

One thing that the first film did really well was that it managed to minimize what we saw of the alien. It knew that it was working on a limited budget and that what it could put out was not going to look very realistic so our views of the alien was very limited. We saw a quick burst or two before it actually appears at the very end. Even with that little bit of exposure, it was possibly a bit too much.

In the sequel, I would have to ding them for gratuitous overuse of aliens. The basic alien really isn't that scary unless it is inhabiting a host form. It looks a bit like a giant slug. We see several of them and they just aren't that frightening after a while. The minimal amount of characters also contributes to this because we don't see a known character get possessed and so the possibility that one of the main characters might get possessed isn't as out in the open.

Wake Up and Enter the '90's?

While this is now not the Nineties, it wasn't the Eighties when they made this film. The first film was deeply mired in what was 'cool' about the eighties and it really worked well. Boom boxes, fast and loud music, conspicuous consumption, it was the rage in the Eighties! In fact I could do a really solid piece on the symbolism of The Hidden when compared to Eighties culture.

In this sequel, they try to reuse the same symbols (including someone doing the boom-box-on-the-shoulder thing) and it just doesn't feel more current. They lift half of their scenes, altering them slightly, from the first film and it just gets silly. I appreciated the attempt to modify that formula a bit with the rave scene but so what?

Driving Force? Where is it???

The biggest way that the second film falls flat is in pacing. Including fifteen minutes from the last film slows the pace considerably from the outset and we just aren't presented with any real sense of urgency in the plot. The alien possessions aren't paced too well. There are points where we don't follow the bodychanging alien at all, there are points where we don't care what the alien is doing at all.

This wasn't the case with the original in which the pace was driven by the wild appetites of the hungry alien. When I was watching the first film, it was always in the back of my mind that there was a hungry, psychotic alien bodyswitcher rampaging around the city. It really worked nicely as a method for keeping the viewer (me in particular) involved.

Parting Stuff

Making a successful sequel for a successful 'B' movie isn't ever really easy and doesn't happen too often. Other examples of sequels that weren't really successful are The Crow, Species, and a slew of others. I really liked The Crow, I liked Species all right but their sequels were pretty lame. I am not really sure whether any of these would qualify as 'B' films exactly but...



This review is part of The Halloween Freestyle Write/Off hosted by shadow8.
Other participants are: shadow8, AmyLEnsor, blackelve, brando814, Chromekiller, dancingpotato, dandj, debbie26, Furie, JackSommersby, jankp, jennifer_gibbons, KingpinLJC, kuuleimomi, lansky2000, lisaatucla, lorendiac,LorinSilver, marytara, matt_harney, mellkinwa, psychovant, systemdwn, Tibullus, Vormancian, Wokelstein, and The_Wood. They have all written something with a Halloween (or horror) theme. Check them out, if you dare.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age