The Witch 2: The Other One review by Bobby Blakey
Well Go USA continues to bring the best of Asian cinema to the US. While the martial arts epics are front and center, they bring all sorts of films including horror, comedy and dramas. In 2018 they brought the Park Hoon-jung directed feature The Witch: Subversion to the US and now they are bringing the follow-up The Witch 2: The Other One starring Shin Si-ah, Jo Min-su, and Park Eun-bin with Hoon-jung once again at the helm. Could this next chapter steps up its game or will it be another failed experiment?
The Witch 2: The Other One follows a mysterious girl who emerges as the sole survivor of a bloody raid on the research facility behind the top-secret Witch Program, where she is rescued by a pair of civilians who soon realize the girl is both very powerful and in very grave danger. However, as the assassins tasked with locating and silencing the girl move ever closer, the lives of everyone around her fall under increasingly great peril.
While I did enjoy the first film it does take almost an hour into the film before anything really exciting happens. (You can check out our review for it here.) Once it does it takes on Matrix style action sequences that are a blast and left things in a cliffhanger of sorts so was eager to see where it might be going next.
Much like the first movie a lot of this film does limp along as it is trying to develop the story of this new character before diving head first into the insanity of it all. There are obvious direct connections to the original with a lot of it seemingly rehashing stuff we have already scene in a different scenario. This eventually leads to more action and violence and its here I have the most issues.
The first film used some CGI, but for the most part kept to the more practical action and brutality where this new film offers more of the same while using way more CGI. This is meant to enhance the powers they are using as well as no doubt to try and step things up from the previous film, but for me it just lost its edge and is more cartoonish. Sure there are some fun visuals and action, but it is just so CGI heavy it lost any reality it could have had instantly.
While I feel the first one was slow it had a great pay off with the action and amped up violence in the last act. This one follows the exact same formula, but just doesn’t pack that punch it could have. Clearly they are planning fror another since this one oncve again ends on a cliffhanger of sorts setting up the next film so let’s hope they learn some of their lessons and bring the action in a much better way.
Decide for yourself and check out The Witch 2: The Other One available now on Blu-ray and DVD from Well Go USA.