Le Fear II: Le Sequel
Director: Jason Croot
Writer: Jason Croot
Sequel to: Le Fear
Cast: Kyri Saphiris, Andrew Tiernan, Seye Adelekan, Tom Bonington
[Screener Review.]

Plot:
Even the rather, let’s say, unideal ending of Carlos’ (Kyrie Saphiris) last film can’t discourage him – he’s already looking for funding for his next film and finds Dirk Heinz (Andrew Tiernan), a producer who mostly works in Nollywood and who promises him 10 million, if Carlos puts in 500.000 of his own money. Carlos agrees and several months later he is eager to look at the custom built set his money bought him. But that set turns out to be just a caravan that comes with the fast-talking enthusiastic Efi (Seye Adelekan). Will Carlos be able to shoot his film this time?

Le Fear II is on a much bigger scale than Le Fear, which sometimes works to its advantage and sometimes not. While it does run a little long, I mostly had fun watching.

I am not sure whether I’m completely happy with the representation of Nollywood in this film. Personally, I think that their work-arounds when it comes to teeny tiny budgets and lack of expensive technology are quite ingenious and very creative. With Efi and Africa (Roxy Sternberg) it looks more like they don’t know any better and don’t want to know any better. And Efi swindles more often than not which is also not a great image to paint of Nollywood producers either. The clash of Nollywood and European Productions can be an interesting subject, but Le Fear lacks sympathy for Nollywood.

While I’m at it, let me mention the more nitpicky things that didn’t work for me: Most of the time the little budget this film has is of no issue, especially when it comes to the shoot-within-the-shoot. But when it comes to Dirk’s production studio, I felt that a little more grandeur would have been necessary. And some of the scene transitions and cuts felt unfinished – but it is entirely possible that it just was unfinished, since I got a pretty early screener.

But other than that I did enjoy the film. I especially loved the “special effects” and Vanessa the Vampire (Eleanor James) who was absolutely hilarious and the distillation of every bad soft porn vampire ever. Wonderful. And the creepy car tow guy who seemed to come from an entirely different and way better film – and nobody involved in the film-within-the-film noticed.

Despite its many strong moments the movie is a little long. Plus, I also wouldn’t want to watch any more of Carlos’ film making attempts – I think the idea has run its course with the second film. But the two films that I’ve seen now were fun.

Summarizing: Definitely entertaining.