33 Years is a long time. Whether you are talking about world events, a person’s life, or technology, 33 years is a long amount of time. If you subscribe to the 10,000-hour rule, the principle that if you deliberately practice for 10,000 hours you can become a master in any field, 33 years is long enough to make you a master at anything. So after 33 years, why is Return to Splatter Farm not only worse than Splatter Farm but have filmmaking hasn’t improved at all?

33 years after a set of twins and countless other victims were found splayed all over the “Death Farm” the property’s heir, Bobby, with her friends plan a trip to see it. After meeting the colorful locals and gathering supplies, they find the farm in a liveable condition considering how long its been and decide to have some fun. After a full day of drinking and goofing around the group start to notice strange things around the farm. Chalking up the abandoned tent as just camper trash and unrecognizable bones as animal remains, the group soon discovers that there is a resident of the farm that never left.

For those who haven’t seen the original Splatter Farm, considering it has been long out of print and taken down from Youtube, it is as budget as horror movies come. From terrible acting to a mess of a plot, it hoped to catch an audience with the shock factor of its content. Necrophilia, incest, and rape happen multiple times creating a pretty vile story. Surprisingly though, the shot on video style and the droning synth soundtrack creates an unsettling almost nightmarish vibe to the whole film, with the low-resolution images even making the practical effect look more real. In the end, while it is a sickening production all around it is at least memorable compared to the bore that is Return of Splatter Farm.

Everything that made Splatter Farm unique or interesting is missing from Return to Splatter Farm. All of the improvements to the filmmaking have just been the accessibility of good cameras, passed that nothing has improved in the 33 years between the films, perhaps they’ve gotten even worse. This film is indiscernible from every other low-budget slasher movie, from the killer being just some man to every actor speaking their line like a highschool drama student. Then there is the plot, still as barebones as ever that can be simplified to, people go to place and get killed.

When I received the news that I was reviewing Return to Splatter Farm I immediately went to watch Splatter Farm seeing where it all started. Though I was shocked, uncomfortable. and underwhelmed, I was excited to see where they would take the film from here. Never would I have guessed that the no-budget shot on video film would somehow be more interesting than its 2020 sequel. Where the first one is an admirable, yet misguided, production that was made by two 19-year-old brothers just trying to make something, its charm is no longer there when a sequel is made 33 years later and makes almost every single mistake again.

2 out of 10