R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned – Film Review

The Wild West has gone to Hell, literally, and the world’s best hope of being saved lies in the gun-slinging hands of Sheriff Roy Pulsipher as he becomes the newest officer for the Rest In Peace Department (R.I.P.D.) enforcing the afterlife’s laws. If the Old West was wild while he was alive, wait until Roy sees how weird it gets once he dies. Roy thought joining the R.I.P.D. would give him a chance to revisit his daughter and solve the mystery of his murder. Instead, he has his holsters full with havoc and hellfire when he’s given a mission to stop a dangerous demon from opening a portal to the underworld. The fate of the living and the dead now depends on Roy and his partner Jeanne, a mysterious swordswoman, as cowboys clash with creatures and undead insanity unleashes apocalyptic chaos.

Nine years ago, the world was cursed by the release of Robert Schwentke‘s R.I.P.D (also marketed as Rest In Peace Department), a supernatural action-comedy film that didn’t bring the goods on either front. The action in that film was some of the worst in years and every time the film made an attempt it humor, it was incredibly cringe-worthy. When you have a comedy that’s that unbelievably dry, it’s a problem.

But since that film came out nearly a decade ago, we as a society were under the impression that we wouldn’t have to sit and suffer through a sequel. Well… we were wrong because we got “treated” to a brand new, surprise sequel, subtitled Rise of the Damned. After watching this film I can safely say that this franchise is not being revived. It’s going to be buried once again.

This is one of the most visually terrible movies I’ve seen this entire year. It’s almost entirely gray and so lifeless looking. This could’ve been done on purpose hence the title, but this movie really needed some color to shine through because it’s genuinely horrendous to look at.

But of course, that’s not the film’s main issue – that would be the script by Andrew Klein and Paul Leyden. It’s one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies of the entire year, and the story is absurdly awful in every regard. They fail miserably to come up with a reason for why this movie even exists. It just kind of does and we simply have to put up with it, unfortunately.

It also makes me laugh to see that Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds didn’t return for this sequel, probably because they knew the first one was outrageously horrible and they didn’t want to suddenly start making terrible movies again. So, instead, we have Jeffrey Donovan and Rachel Adedeji in the lead roles.

While their performances aren’t bad, their characters certainly are. They get next to nothing here in terms of character development, almost always coming across as one-note in every single scene. Who are these people and why do we even care about their plight? We’re never given any substance.

This whole movie needed substance. I wanted for there to be something that was a shining light amidst the absolute darkness on display here, but that never happened. This is one of the most unbearably bad movies of the year, and we can only pray that they don’t suddenly release a third movie nine years later.

R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned is an unintentionally hilarious, visually horrendous, and mind-numbingly boring supernatural action-comedy that fails to justify its existence.