There is one thing I liked about TBK: Toolbox Murders 2, and although it arrives at the end of the movie, I’m going to reveal it. Skip this paragraph if you must, but c’mon — we all know the sequel is and always was going to be as formulaic as a 12.5-ounce canister of Enfamil. Anyway, having survived days as a serial killer’s hostage, our heroine is told she forgot something … and is handed her cellphone. Still charged, the device has something like 150-plus missed calls on it. D’oh! Trust me: That’s the only horror cliché TBK:TM2 dares subvert.
A belated follow-up to Tobe Hooper’s Toolbox Murders, which itself was a remake of the notorious 1978 grindhouse “classick,” TBK:TM2 turns out to be awful, and not even in a fun way. Hooper’s 2004 redux is, to me, a memorable gem unearthed from the Walmart $5 DVD bargain bin, so I was all for another trip to its historic Hollywood hotel setting. Hooper was not, apparently, so in steps Dean C. Jones, graduating from the makeup department to the director’s chair. Since Jones also comes credited as co-writer and a producer, he gets the blame for turning in work that screams made-for-TV, yet is full of gory (and good) effects the tube wouldn’t touch.
Stuntman Chris Doyle reprises his role as the mute Coffin Baby, the Darkman-looking dude who does all the stabbing, slicing and cooking; he’s like, says a cop, “Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez, all rolled into one,” and it’s obvious from some of the framing choices that Jones is trying to turn Coffin Baby into a “thing.” No need — if the rights holders can’t settle on a name (see the title moniker of “TBK,” a tasteless pun on/anagram of Wichita’s real-life BTK Killer), fan-favorite status is well out of reach.
The cannibalistic psychopath kidnaps a previous victim’s sister (Chauntal Lewis, Séance), cages her like an animal and makes her watch as he tortures other prey with this tool and that. But at least he cooks her a tub of Jiffy Pop so she’ll have something to snack on while spectating. Toward the finish, she encounters another captive, played by poor Bruce Dern (Nebraska), for whom I felt sorry — not for his character, but the two-time Oscar nominee himself. I know a man’s gotta eat, but geez, Bruce! There’s always ramen.
I’d like to think it’s not coincidence that this return to the Toolbox leaves us with this message: “If you can’t be something great, do something terrible.” Mission accomplished. —Rod Lott
At least the first time Melanie Griffith had work performed on her face, it was legit. One tends to need such reconstructive surgery when a lion plays peekaboo with your head, which tends to happen when Mom and Fake Dad force you to be part of their “great idea” for a movie: to share the screen with dozens of live, untrained, completely dangerous, utterly ferocious, meat-eating jungle cats. 
In the department of sexual relations, Mike (Michael Stearns, 
As funny and charming as they come, Paul Rudd (