The makers of the original realised that Laid To Rest garnered quite the cult following, so after much deliberation, they did the impossible thing that only horror movies can do, and bring back the antagonist/anti-hero of the piece, and up the ante......The first movie was pretty much in the same vein as other slasher movies such as the original Halloween, ANOES, and Friday the 13th, but it had a really grimy, almost goth like edge to it, which made it stand out just that little more than other horror movies.That, and the fact that the kills were just so extraordinarily in your face and didn't pull any punches, that was the novelty.Here, just like the rules go for horror sequels, it's pretty much the same, but the makers don't know what to do with the narrative, so they almost meld the far superior Collector movie with the invincible Chromeskull's plans........to film him kill people who he's had in coffins for a while.Oh, and the 'invincible' Chromeskull has hench-people, in the shape of Brian Austin Green, and special guest star Danielle Harris, who is only in it because she's our modern day scream queen.And it's a pretty boring affair, even though the film is on for barely ninety minutes, it seems like a life time.The kills are as visceral as ever, but they use far more CGI than practical effects, which ruins the illusion of the kill.If they make a third, let's hope they return to the grime and grunge that smothered the original, and make it a little more edgier...

I know that I enjoyed the original Laid to Rest for its sheer enthusiasm and spectacularly OTT gore, but I can recall very little about the actual plot, despite having only seen it a year ago; perhaps that's because there wasn't much of a story to remember in the first place (the lack of strong narrative clearly didn't matter too much to me: I gave the first film a rating of 7.5/10).Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2 is just as eager to please in terms of bloody mayhem, and does so brilliantly with oodles of really mean-spirited and excellently executed gore, but this time around the film-makers also try to build on Chromeskull's character, and it is here that the film comes apart quicker than one of the killer's victims. While a bit of back-story mightn't have been so bad, what we are presented with here is so overblown, convoluted, and incomprehensible that it only serves to confuse and irritate in the extreme.The film opens abruptly with no recap of previous events, immediately launching into the unnecessarily complex nonsense that passes for a plot, in which a secret organisation is revealed to be behind the work of our metal mask-wearing maniac. With a script even messier than one of Chromeskull's kills, the viewer is simply left with too many unanswered questions—Who are these characters? What is the nefarious organisation hoping to achieve? Why are the police so f•••ing inept? Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to hire Danielle Harris (she was in the extremely disappointing sequel to Hatchet too!)? It all adds up to a very frustrating and frankly rather tedious experience.If director Robert Hall proceeds with his intended third and final Laid to Rest film, I really hope that he succeeds in explaining matters in a satisfying manner; simply drenching proceedings with buckets of really nasty knife action just won't cut it next time.I rate Chromeskull: Laid to Rest 2 a 9/10 for the sterling work of the effects guys, but 1/10 for everything else (resulting in a disappointing average of 5/10).

Growing up in the 80s i was subjected to all the classic slasher horror films, Friday the 13th....nightmare on elm street.....Halloween......and so on. However through the 90s we had very little to be pleased with in the slasher department. A ghost face killer from Scream or The guy off the Fishsticks box cover with a meat hook from I know what you did last summer. However ROBERT HALL busted onto what seemed like a dying genre and gave it a new era ushering in the next age of slashers with his Character CHROMESKULL!!! ChromeSkull : Laid to rest 2 was truly well done.....it wasn't an over kill film with a bad story line....it didn't use excessive blood and gore and tits and ass in it to keep the viewers attention. Chromeskull played by Nick Principe was backed with a stellar cast containing Thomas Dekker.....Brian Austin Green.....Mimi Michaels....and Angelina Armani along with Brett Wagner and Danielle Harris to just name a few.Brian Austin green gave the performance of his life in this film. For me only knowing him as David silver from Beverly hills 90210 to seeing him in this he carried the film to the instant cult classic it will become. Nick Principe who plays ChromeSkull is truly an instant icon of today. He will soon be ranked alongside Freddy and Jason and Michael myers. The man plays the character brilliantly.The story was truly a step up from the first film and the kill scenes are truly amazing in this film. As a self proclaimed gore hound i couldn't be happier with Angelina Armani's performance and Death in the film. All around phenomenal spfx by Robert Hall and his Team at ALMOST HUMAN.Robert Hall truly did a Hell of job on this film and it truly shows this time around, i personally believe this film along with the chrome skull character will be iconic in the horror community and genre.

Let me start this review by stating that I am an avid horror movie fan for well over 30 years. I read Fangoria magazine, I've even attended the conventions since before they were popular. The reason I state that is that I don't want anyone to think that my bad review of this flick has anything to do with the its nature.Chromeskull - LTR 2 is a brutal film. The kills are creative and very gory (which is great). In addition to that, it was good seeing Brian Austin Green finally acting (he did a terrific job as one of the villains). So what made it so bad? The answer to that question is the entire sloppy concept. The original LTR was nothing short of a slasher classic. It had the brutality and gore of the sequel, but to go with it, it had a great plot, and it might have even been a believable story. It never got boring, and honestly, I recently saw it for about the fifth time and I still could not peel my eyes off the screen. LTR 2 went off on such a distant tangent, it plays out like a "final destination" movie that gets made for the sakes of showing gory kills, yet forgets about plot - much less a good one.Spoiler Time - The ChromeSkull killer is apparently the head of some powerful organization that covers his murders and sets up his kills in a game like style. Green is his enforcer, and this organization can even cover up killing cops (they must be some sort of super crime syndicate) and still going unnoticed. This was strike one (totally unbelievable setup). Strike two is that the original killer seems to come from the Jason Vorhees gene pool, as he is actually saved after his face melted into the mask at the end of the last movie, and the main character bashed his head in with a baseball bat. So they called on Joan River's surgeon, who saves him after having had his head completely flattened (had they brought in Herbert West to reanimate him, this would have been more believable). Meanwhile the movie goes totally cliché, killing off the main starlet from the first movie in the first 5 minutes (we haven't seen that before - have we?) - strike 3! But it gets worse - from there the story falls further apart (Green and Danielle Harris are power playing for control of the organization, the original killer becomes Frankenstein like, a new victim is introduced that you really don't care much for, a new game is setup, Green and killer are also feuding, and the male survivor from the original is also brought in as well). This blended with what has to be the worse police department in the world on the case, you just don't see the terrible ending coming (the director must have hoped the audience was progressively going blind like the main character in this slop of a movie).... There are very ridiculous scenes with cops that are just laughable because Barnie Fife from Mayberry was probably a better cop than the guys in this movie - to make characters this dumb, you're just insulting your audience. At the end of this fiasco, I felt cheated and robbed. Robert Hall took his perfect slasher vision (the first movie) and basically sold out to make a cheap sequel. I honestly still cannot believe just how bad this movie was...