TALES FROM THE HOOD 2 (2018)

I wish somebody would give Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott a budget. Modern horror filmmakers like Mike Flanagan and David F. Sandberg have shown that a lot can be done with a little, but with Tales from the Hood 2 has a production value on the level of a basic cable movie. With a little bit more, it really could have been something

It's a shame, because Cundieff and Scott really do deserve better. They're returning for a sequel to one of the most underrated, socially relevant horror films of the 1990s: an anthology that's a melding of bite-size EC Comics-style fables with honest, complicated, and important themes of racial inequity and social justice. It confronted some facets of racism that are often ignored in pop culture, the most memorable being the segment featuring Corbin Bernsen as a racist southern Congressman whose apocryphal art comes to life and attacks him.

The sequel has some of that urgency, and isn't afraid to confront some uncomfortable topics. Cundieff and Scott take on the military-industrial complex, the rise of A.I., gentrification, cultural appropriation, and voter suppression, but their main target, as in the first one, is Black indifference. It's worth noting that in both films, many Black characters get their comeuppance as well as white ones: the original's first segment memorably skewered a complacent Black cop who stood by as his white partners murdered a social activist. The sequel's final segment, about a similarly complacent Black Mississippi Republican, takes the same aim: that the fight for equality requires the vigilance of all People of Color, and that there is no room for playing along with the oppressor.

The clever writing and earnest acting are almost enough to make up for a laughably amateurish-looking production. The opening credits sequence, a CGI animation worthy of a mid-'90s PC game, doesn't bode well; neither does the wraparound sequence, boasting Keith David as a sinister strategist hired by a government contractor to develop an A.I. law enforcement device. The wraparound has its funny moments, and its social message is relevant, but the connection to the stories is tenuous, and David may as well have shouted "Hey! I'm the Devil!" at his first appearance.

Except for the last one, the stories lean heavily on humor more than horror, where the first film was primarily macabre with dark humor around the edges. It unfortunately puts its two best segments first and its longest, most ponderous one last. The first story, about a clueless white girl who visits a "Museum of Negrosity" to steal a gollywog doll for her collection, is supremely nasty, with an especially wicked punchline. The second, about a couple of gang members who kidnap a TV psychic to find out where their dead rival hid some money, is silly but still enjoyable, anchored by a sublimely goofy performance from Bryan Batt as the semi-charlatan psychic.

The last two tackle issues that are more serious than the previous, but stumble in maintaining their comic-book narrative. The third, about a duo of date-rapists who get a surprise, starts interestingly but ends abruptly and predictably. The fourth, castigating a comfortable Black man whose money and vote go to a race-baiting politician, had the potential to be the movie's most captivating story, but instead it's only the most thuddingly self-important and preachy, portraying a post-Jim Crow South and a Colonel Sanders-like politician that are more cartoonish than haunting, and utilizing the specter of Emmett Till in a way that is, while respectful, more than a little contrived.

The triumph of the original Tales from the Hood was that it got the tone just right: it was both a spooky, rousing, entertaining comic book film in the vein of Tales from the Crypt and the old Amicus films of the '70s, and a serious exploration of racial injustice. I'm convinced that if Cundieff and Scott had been given a proper production, they could have emulated it again. All the pieces are in place otherwise.

** 1/2 out of ****