Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Xtro 2: The Second Encounter' (1990)

This movie is so forgotten I practically had to do a deep web search to find a watchable copy. Seriously, just try to type it into the regular search and see if you can come up with a watchable copy. It won't come up. In fact even major horror fan pages don't mention this movie in their "complete list" of Alien themed movies. I have the distinct feeling this was a straight-to-video production. It took me forever just to find a bootleg copy that wasn't dubbed in some language I don't speak. When I finally did find one, the quality was so poor it was almost comical. Kinda like watching scrambled porn. The recording was clearly from an old VHS and the auto tracker kept popping on the screen in Spanish. If you know what either of those things are, you probably had some pretty kick ass horror movie memories like me.

What's the point of spending hours trying to find this movie on the internet so I could watch it after all these years? You may remember from several of my older reviews from movies like Leviathan and DeepStar Six. I watched these when I was very young and I've had a hard-on for monster movies and horror ever since, so it's nice to take a stroll down nostalgia lane and see if these, honestly terrible, movies still stand up to my childhood memories.

Xtro 2 was not one of those that stood the test of time. I mean, I liked re-watching Creature and a ton of other movies from my childhood, but this one was just plain awful. It was still great in the sense that it was riff-worthy material, and you could have a lot of fun with it just like that, but by no means was it good horror or even good-bad horror.

The acting was predictably awful, but it was even bad for horror, almost porno levels bad. The plot made no fucking sense. Hell, the gestation of the creature didn't make any fucking sense. Most of the movie is pretty boring, with fleeting moments of excitement when the monster pops up, and that's fucking criminal for a creature feature.

Beastie was neat though. Really loved the rubber monster design here. Just wish they could have done a little more with it in the actual fucking movie.

Riffers only, do not watch.

SPOILERS!!!

I can't fucking believe that I didn't know Nicholas Lea was in this movie! I guess it's no surprise. I was like... 8... 6 when I saw this the first time and probably didn't even know who he was? It would be almost another 16 years before I would watch it again. I guess your career had to start somewhere though, Lea. Still, he was probably the best actor in the movie even though it was a supporting role. Is that really a spoiler?... hmmm, I guess not.

How the fuck does this 'interdimensional alien' work? Scientists bring over an alien from another dimension that was using a woman's body as a host. There was a gratuitous ripoff of the chest-burster scene from Alien, and then the rest of the movie is basically one long ripoff of Alien and Aliensafter the next. But the alien came out of the woman's body almost fully formed. I could see how it might have been able to hollow out a cavity and just pop out when it was big enough, but wouldn't she just die?

So, you figure this thing needs to stick, Idontfuckenknow, larva or something into people like a wasp, but then in just lays like... Spores? Eggs? Something like that in the one guy and he pretty much explodes into a cloud of spore/egg thingies. Now, you could have just done that from the very start with the first lady, and maybe even had a more interesting concept that wasn't a total blatant ripoff of the chest-burster scene. I guess in those days, getting the Aliens money was more important than maybe making a halfway decent movie.

I could just say "Watch Alien," as it's a better movie with better actors. However, if you're a hardcore riffer, this movie may be amusing.