Director – Philippe Gagnon, Screenplay – Ian Carpenter & Aaron Martin, Producers – Kaleigh Kavanagh & Graham Ludlow, Photography – Daniel Villeneuve, Music – Mario Sevigny, Visual Effects – A.A. Studios (Supervisor – Marc Hall), Makeup Effects – Erik Gosselin. Production Design – Lyne Chenier. Production Company – Incendo/Crave.
Cast
Robyn Alomar (Alana), Nadine Bhabha (Sadie), Nia Roam (Claudia), Tim Rozon (The Magician), Romy Weltman (Pet), Tori Barban (Merry), Ess Hodlmoser (XNDR), Lisa Truong (Lucie), Dakota Jamal Wellman (The Prez), Matthew Villeneuve (JP), Daniel Gravelle (The Wil), Emma Elle Paterson (Mitchy), Darragh Mondoux (Fake Carne), Judith Baribeau (Professor Reycraft)
Plot
As her finals near, Alana is still traumatised by the events of the Halloween party aboard the train. Alana’s roommate Claudia persuades her that the best way she can get over her fears is to join a rerun of the train ride being held by the class for a New Year’s party, which is billed as a Terror Train ride. Alana does so but finds the actual survivors are now surrounded by novelty seekers who are livestreaming the ride, a crime podcaster and others selling merchandise. Amid this, Alana believes a killer is striking, but all those around her dismiss the pile-up of bodies as a publicity stunt.
The Canadian-made Terror Train (1980) was one of the classics of the original Slasher Film fad. Three decades later it underwent a remake in Canada from director Philippe Gagnon with Terror Train (2022). Terror Train 2 is a sequel to the remake that was shot at the same time, using the same film crew, almost all of the same cast and even the same train sets from the previous film.
I really hated the Terror Train remake. I found its morally preachy tone and drive to trash the original and rewrite everything with modern woke ideology to be awful. On the other hand, the sequel is no longer constrained by having to be a slavish remake of the 1980 film. That said, it does retain one key aspect of the 1980 film – it takes place during the course of a New Year’s Party aboard a train, which was changed to a Halloween party in the remake. The woke preachiness of the previous film has been toned down.
Train ride with a slasher round 2 – (l to r front) Robyn Alomar, Dakota Jamal Wellman and Lisa Truong
Terror Train 2 takes the time to imagine how the original might actually play out in the 2020s and adapts many aspects for the social media generation. There is the appealing central idea of a restaging of a famous murder scene where the heroine is struggling with her trauma, while surrounded by people livestreaming from the train, a true crime podcaster and someone who was on the periphery of the original incident selling autographs. And when the new set of killings begins, Robyn Alomar is facing everyone around her trying to convince her she is imagining it or it is just someone doing it as a stunt. Appropriately, when the identity of the new killer is revealed, their reasons for doing so is because Robyn gained a higher social media presence than they did. “Must be hard being the most famous Final Girl in existence,” Robyn is snidely told. On the other hand, it seems a major stretch of believability to have people hold a party to restage the events of a massacre a mere two months later without this causing outrage and accusations of poor taste.
Terror Train 2 is better than its predecessor, the remake, was, although never rises to anything more than strictly average. Robyn Alomar seems to have settled into the role and make an adequate Final Girl, although still pales in the shadow of Jamie Lee Curtis. At least she gets a moral strength that lifts the character. Tom Rozon’s Magician, one of the more ambiguous characters of the remake, is made into just a regular guy, which severely diminishes the enigma and charisma he had in either the 1980 original or the remake.
