Directed by: Marcus Spiegel
Starring: Jodi Lyn O’Keefe and Nick Corri

As I write this review, I have spent the last week suffering from Kidney stones. Now, I’m not a woman and I can’t even imagine the pain that my wife (or any woman) went through to give birth, but I’m sure these little buggers are almost as painful as that. Knowing this, believe me when I tell you that watching Devil in the Flesh 2 is only slightly less painful than having these stones. I tell you this because I care and because I don’t want anyone, friend or enemy, to go through the agony I have endured for the last 90 minutes.

When I saw the credits–saw that they looked as if they were generated on a high school computer–I should have run the other way. But silly me, I stuck it out. I’ve never been one to walk out on a movie. I’m always afraid that I’ll leave and it will suddenly get good. Then I’ll have to stand around at parties listening to how incredible the ending of the film was, and I will have to beat myself mercilessly for wimping out.

The film opens with a mental patient, Debbie Strong (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe), escaping from the hospital. How she makes it past security is never shown nor explained. She simply kills her nurse and runs down the hall. (The barbed wire fence we’ve just seen beneath the video credits is apparently no obstacle.) On a deserted stretch of desert road, Debbie meets a hotel heiress named Tracy who sprays pepper spray into her own eyes (she had the can reversed) and falls onto a pointy object. Bye bye Tracy. Debbie then assumes her identity and heads off to college where she falls in love with the first professor she meets. Her love instantly becomes an insane (after all, she is a mental patient) obsession and she spends the rest of the movie killing anyone and everyone who stands between her and her man.

Jodi Lyn O’Keefe is a beautiful girl, and I can tell she has some acting chops, but they are wasted on this lame cliche of a character that has been ripped off from Poison Ivy andStepfather movies. One moment, she is cool and calculating, the next she is a blubbering idiot. I’ve come to understand that she did not play the character in the original film, the appropriately titled DEVIL IN THE FLESH. That shame fell to Rose McGowan–who had the good sense not to return for this follow-up. With the ending of this movie clearly setting up yet another sequel, let’s hope Jodi will learn from Rose’s example.

2 out of 5 stars