MY CALL: A neat, wild action movie that simply doesn’t live up to its predecessor and transforms a bit too much into sparkling Twilight Anime from its once dire and gritty source material. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Witch 1-2: For more brutal superhuman action, take a stab at Lucy(2014), Upgrade (2018) or The Night Comes for Us (2018).
Whether bleak shots of a student-filled school bus traversing a remote war zone, or the stark contrast of a blood-caked bare foot stepping into immaculate snow, the director of photography is serving us well in complementing the film’s tone at every opportunity. The cinematography is breathe-taking.
After Koo Ja Yoon’s (Da-mi Kim; The Witch: Part 1) fist-splattering finale of part 1, Jang (Lee Jong-Suk) emerges the lone survivor among the Witch project experimental subjects. She crosses paths with Kyung Hee (Park Eun-bin), a pregnant woman recently kidnapped.
This sequel differs from part 1 in that now many people have superpowers. People are kicked and thrown with jolting power launching them 50 feet away, and little girls throw grown men with one arm like Superman. The physics-defiance is strong, but boy is it fun to watch.
Still, somehow this feels much less engaging than part 1. Not uninteresting, just not as good—not nearly as good. But it has its moments. I particularly enjoyed the scenes of Kyung Hee’s brother showing Jang YouTube as she was entranced by videos of people eating food she didn’t know, and of Jang’s first visit to a grocery store and eating her way through the free samples like PacMan. Cute, funny scenes. I also enjoy the combat telekinesis gags. They look fantastic and they take many forms on screen.
The fights are initially more rare and less impactful. Not sure why that would be the case given part 1’s precedent, but it is. These fights feel way more Marvel, but in a bad way. The gritty charm just isn’t there anymore. The action is still pretty cool, but I am no longer awestruck as I was with part 1.
The next-generation new-and-improved Witch kids are like the sparkling Twilight vampires of this once dire world. They move like The Flash, they’re practically unkillable, and they’re annoyingly full of themselves. Thankfully, Jang is “even more” next gen, and makes short work of them. Jang is very much the Neo of the Witch program.
I enjoyed watching this but it was definitely vastly inferior to part 1 to such extent that I truly hope there will be no part 3. I prefer to imagine that part 1 is the movie to watch, recommend, and to which one should limit oneself.