Picking up immediately after the events from the first film, Don’t F*** In The Woods 2 continues the story with a new chapter. A bunch of Pine Hills Summer Camp counselors arrive days before the season starts to drink, have sex and make questionable decisions about their futures. Oblivious of what happened the night before around the same woods, they decide to behave recklessly until one of the survivors shows up to warn them about the horrific events. It may be too late for some of the campers, but this is just the beginning of the survival tests the forest has prepared for them.

Don’t F*** In The Woods 2 (I didn’t even know there was a first film which apparently was released in 2016) knocks around the vault of 80s nostalgia releasing the magic of camp slashers where nudity and blood were the perfect mix to become an outstanding film for a young audience. Considering we’re living in 2022, this movie doesn’t have any magical elements that make it stand out beyond being a continuation of a hackneyed plot. To assess this feature, I took on the task of watching the first part which, if I make a comparison of both, is not better than its second chapter–  the sequel has a better production value than its first entry. Therefore, instead of saying how much I didn’t enjoy it because of how wrong it is (which I’ll mention at the end), I will number the points it has in its favor.

First of all, the plot deals with a variant of the first villain, a new setting, and new characters besides the final girl from  2016’s Don’t F*** In The Woods. It has less gore and carnage than its predecessor because the villain met its maker. From the first scene, it slithers into revealing a new antagonist in a demeaning way. Secondly, it satires many tropes of other 80s films like Sleepaway Camp and The Evil Dead which are nice to have but not enough to make it stand on its own recreation or innovation of concept. It also has a slower pace than the first film– it picks up and gets interesting after the barely X-rated sex scenes which only favors the male castmembers without showing their members (no pun intended). The range of character profiling seems more limited in Don’t F*** In The Woods 2, and it even lessens the diversity in sexual orientation by removing LGBTQIA+ characters to add more stereotypes to be mocked and shamed for their physique. Unfortunately, that is all it succeeds in doing and, by now, I realize most of these are negative.

If you’re a fan of B-rated horror, don’t expect Don’t F*** In The Woods 2 to be a delightful stroll. It may have surpassed its production showing effort in prosthetic makeup, video editing, audio mixing, and a story that serves as a bridge for a possible third installment, but bigger doesn’t mean better when it boards and plays heavily with delicate subjects like body shaming, classism, and rape– and that makes it bitter.

3 OUT OF 10 WORMS