I couldn't wait to watch "Hold Your Breath 2" over the weekend and felt a little embarrassed. The box office results of these two films in North America, the first was released in 2016, the first weekend three days of 26 million US dollars. The second, released this year, made $10 million over three days in its first weekend. Even considering the environment of the epidemic, it is still not ideal (you can refer to the box office comparison of "A Quiet Place" 2). The imdb scores of the two films also differed by nearly 1 point. It can be said that the box office and word of mouth did not meet expectations.
In all fairness, I don't think Hold Your Breath 2 is too bad to watch alone. As an R-rated film, the film's chilling and oppressive style and multitudinous killing scenes have caught the audience's attention. But as a sequel, the target audience cannot get around the genre expectations set in the previous work. In 2016, when the first film of "Hold Your Breath" came out as a dark horse of a low-cost horror thriller, the audience was not only surprised, but also put a layer of genre expectations and higher quality expectations for the sequel (if any). shackles. If the product positioning of the first film is "suspense thriller horror film", then the type of the second film is to make a more subversive adjustment to the first film and become a "bloody killing action film". The first part had the surprising, suspenseful and thrilling atmosphere of "thinking that the vision was in control" but was brutally murdered by the blind uncle of the special forces. The second part replaced it with a depiction of bloody action scenes. But in fact, the former is an important reason why the audience has become a dark horse for the series and the previous work. Stripping away the core competitiveness and commercial selling points, and even subverting the genre expectations of the audience established by the previous work, is always more dangerous for the sequel of commercial genre films (in this regard, the "Quiet Place" series is relatively Well, the second part follows the high concept of the first part, and optimizes and upgrades the scene and core).
From the character point of view, the first part of "Hold Your Breath" is about a group of young people who are about to wash their hands and steal the last vote. Viewers believe that they are not inherently bad, just people with occasional mistakes and flaws. Such little people are easy to resonate with the audience, after all, everyone has these "small flaws". When they enter the blind uncle's territory, whether their previous "little mistakes" should be punished like death is the emotional force that mainly affects the audience. In the second part, the former powerful villain Blind Uncle was promoted to the protagonist, and the powerful protagonist established by such a previous work largely eliminated the type of horror thriller. This is also the main reason why "Hold Your Breath 2" deviates from the first genre, and is more inclined to action films like "Little People". The character arc and emotional foothold of the other protagonist, the little girl, in the second film is also unconvincing. Such a child who was forcibly plundered and adopted, although the parents forced him to become a scumbag, but at the end of the film, the girl was thrown into the arms of the former "perpetrator", which was not handled properly.
As the most eye-catching setting in the series, the role of Uncle Blind has changed from the cool villain in the first part to the positive role in the second part that requires the audience to care about and agree, and has not upgraded the commerciality of the series in terms of scenes and confrontations. The frontal characters in the first part are ordinary people, and the blind uncle looks blind and weak but is indeed an invincible version of existence. Ordinary people confronting retired commandos keep the film's suspense and thrilling oppression throughout. But in the second part, the blind man has become a positive character, and the villain of the film is a street drug gangster. Except for the number, it is basically impossible to feel that they have an overwhelming advantage over the blind man in terms of physical fitness or IQ. This caused me to think it was the R-rated version of "Home Alone" when I watched the first half of the film. With the strength of the blind uncle, it is really a matter of minutes to crush them.
Therefore, I think "Hold Your Breath 2" alone is a good action movie to watch, but it is not a qualified sequel. As for how to make a sequel to a commercial genre film, I would like to thank the film for some inspiration and thinking for me.
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