Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1990)
"Part alien. Part predator. All terror."
Plot
A top-secret government project called Nexus sends three volunteers into another dimension where an unseen force attacks them. A rescue mission brings back one of the survivors and she is put into quarantine, but it turns out she is the host body for an alien parasite. The creature emerges from her and rushes off into the lab’s ventilation system where it quickly grows to maturity and begins stalking and killing off the remaining members of the research team.
Review
The first Xtro was a grubby 1983 British sci-fi horror which has developed a cult following in the years since its release, with the legendary sequence of a fully-grown man is literally born as well as giant Action Men coming to life in otherworldly fashion and Maryam D’Abo’s sizzling ‘nudity-first, acting second’ performance. This 1991 ‘sequel’ is totally unrelated, save for the participation of original director Harry Bromley Davenport, who, although he did not retain the rights to the Xtro story or any of the characters, had a legal claim to purely the title itself. Why not cash in and make a totally unrelated film but just using the title? That’s what Davenport did, and he was able to work out a deal with a small Canadian studio to make this unremarkable sci-fi horror actioner. Whereas the first Xtro appeared to be an Alien knock-off but was anything but one, Xtro II: The Second Encounter appears to be an Alien AND Aliens knock-off and is everything like both! The sheer cynicism of this business move was a brilliant, albeit manipulative exercise in exploding an audience's expectations.
If you’ve seen one Alien or Aliens rip-off, then you’ve seen them all and the 80s and 90s produced far superior imitations of both Ridley Scott’s seminal classic and Cameron’s landmark sequel than this dreary affair. Things play out exactly as you’d expect with the array of expendable characters defined purely by one or two lines of exposition dialogue splitting up and attempting to escape the facility before realizing they can’t and deciding to kill the creature instead. What appears to be barren and sparsely decorated sets, perhaps even incomplete, are shroud in darkness or fog or a combination of both. Cinematography seems to consist of every action set piece being illuminated by an ethereal blue light which makes no sense given where they are supposed to be in this underground lab. Why would a military research lab look like a haunted aquarium? It's a stylistic choice made purely out of desperation. They likely just threw a blue gel over the lighting rigs to try and make the cheap sets look vaguely sci-fi just to cover up the blank drywalls and completely ignoring whether it fit the reality of the scene or not.
At least Xtro had some genuinely shocking and unpleasant moments, not to mention the constant rug pulling as you never knew what the film was going to throw at you next. Xtro II: The Second Encounter is as predictable and plodding as it comes. It really comes down to the fundamental difference between narrative structure and narrative substance. Copying the structure without understanding the underlying mechanics of suspense always fails. Think about why Ridley Scott's Alien works. It relies on pacing, on the fear of the unknown, on characters making rational decisions but still being completely outmatched. The first Xtro worked because you didn't know the rules of its bizarre world. But Xtro II: The Second Encounter fails because it copies the beats of Aliens so clinically that the audience is suddenly five steps ahead of the film. You know exactly who is going to die and in what order, just based on the character tropes: the nerdy guy, the tough guy, the screaming lady, etc. Every single scene, every character interaction, and every set piece feels like a faded photocopy of something you've already seen executed brilliantly elsewhere. There is zero suspense because the script is essentially just checking boxes on a list.
It's not just the visual logic that collapses. Too much nonsensical scientific technobabble fills the script to make the characters sound smart. Dramatic action music blasts out during certain sequences where there’s nothing exciting happening in a bid to make it appear so. You have characters dully bickering with each other about facility protocols, and the music is swelling like they are in the middle of a high-speed car chase. And worse still, it’s a fair stretch of time before the alien finally makes an appearance. Between all the dull bickering between characters, I’d forgotten that we were supposed to see some splatter. The alien creature looks the same as every other Giger-inspired wannabe – dark and sleek - and is kept to the dark confines of the set for the brief glimpses we get of it. It’s slow and clunky, and just not a menacing enemy. You watch it and think, "I could just briskly walk away from that thing." And because the central monster fails to evoke any fear whatsoever, the horror elements of the film flatline. The make-up and practical effects are handled with the exact same level of care as the set design. For a film trying to appeal to the sci-fi horror crowd, the kills are astonishingly lazy, and you don't even get the basic payoff of a good, gory, practical effect. Almost all the kills happen entirely off-screen. An actor will scream, the camera will cut away, and the next shot is just a splash of fake blood being thrown against a wall.
Airwolf’s Jan-Michael Vincent stars in what must be one of the worst performances I’ve seen in any of these low-budget sci-fi horrors. Vincent looks bored to death with everything and clearly doesn’t care about the film at all. According to Davenport, Vincent was difficult to work with and refused to memorise his lines which led to the director feeding them in every scene before shooting, leading to him mumbling and his droll, monotone delivery. It’s wholly unprofessional despite how bad the script clearly is but this was post-Airwolf when Vincent had really spiralled off the rails with alcoholism and substance abuse. Nicholas Lea, who would shoot to fame the year later when he starred as Agent Krycek in The X-Files, does alright in only his second feature film as one of the mercenaries. It’s clear he had something about him in comparison with the rest of the dull cast. The only thing I remember lead actress Tara Bruckman for is having her shirt ripped open and throat cut in Silent Night, Deadly Night and having watched her in here, it’s still the only thing I remember her for.
Final Verdict
Considering how utterly bonkers the original was, even if he couldn’t continue his story, you’d have expected Bromley Davenport to go all in with whatever project he was attached to and be just as crazy. But Xtro II: The Second Encounter is as unremarkable a film as Xtro was as memorable. Derivative, without an original bone in its body and purely designed as a vanity project for the director to get some closure on the legal issues. If Harry Bromley Davenport had not owned the legal rights to the specific made-up word Xtro, this script about a Nexus project and a vent-crawling parasite would have likely never seen the light of day. That one single word was the key to the bank. And that key was re-used again in the next unrelated sequel, Xtro 3: Watch the Skies.
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Xtro II: The Second Encounter Director(s): Harry Bromley Davenport Writer(s): John A. Curtis (screenplay), Steven Lister (screenplay), Robert Smith (screenplay), Edward Kovach (screenplay) Actor(s): Jan-Michael Vincent, Paul Koslo, Tara Buckman, Jano Frandsen, Nicholas Lea, W.F. Wadden, Rolf Reynolds, Nic Amoroso Duration: 92 mins |  |
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