The Wrath of Becky

 Things have kind of worked out for Becky (Lulu Wilson) since we last saw her. We catch up with her two years after the events of the first movie, as she's trying to sucker a couple of prospective foster parents into taking her in. It's a funny scene that's immediately at odds with the tone of the previous movie, but that's ok, it's making clear the sequel goes for a different, more overtly comedic tone.
 Once she's got social services out of her back, she escapes (or something - just roll with it) with her dog Diego, gets a job and rents a house from a simpatico older woman (Denise Burse) who doesn't ask too many questions and appreciates (and returns in kind) Becky's brand of wry smart-assery.

 But this is a sequel to Becky called The Wrath of Becky... so this idyllic life can't last. And it doesn't: Becky being Becky, she insults a bunch of extremist assholes heading up to make a ruckus at a progressive candidate's rally, probably planning to do more than just holding up signs and chanting.

 Anyhow, the three assholes - the suave true believer (Michael Sirrow), the asshat (Aaron Dalla Villa) and the reluctant one (Matt Angel) - follow Becky home, kill the poor landlady, knock Becky unconscious, and take the dog.

 And here's where the movie started losing me: I mean, Becky saw all of their faces, and we know at least two of them are perfectly willing to kill. The only reason they don't kill her is... well, because it'd be a damn short movie if they did. That's just lousy, lazy writing.

 The three alt-right amigos carry on and meet Darryl, the leader of their terrorist cell - who's played by Seann William Scott, in a similar bit of stunt casting to the first movie. Meanwhile, Becky comes to and decides she wants to kill them all and get Diego back; And because they had mentioned Darryl by name, she's able to track them down (thank goodness he's in the same town, otherwise... well, very short movie, again) at terror HQ, a nice lakefront cabin.

 What happens from there is pretty much the same as on the previous movie, with Becky running a guerrilla warfare campaign against the assholes wot took her dog. Except nowhere nearly as good. To be honest, I didn't think it was good at all.

 One of the things I liked about the first one is that it took its silly premise seriously enough for it to be a decent, tense action film with a very real sense of menace. Here writer/directors Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote seem to think that because it's clearly a comedy, they don't need to sweat the details and ground the action... which is a huge mistake, especially because there's not enough humour, imagination or craziness to pick up the slack.

 All the deaths this time around are pretty boring. Except for one pseudo-elaborate deathtrap (the old tie the grenade pin to the doorknob trick) that kind of strained my suspension of disbelief, the kills are completely unimaginative; There's some gore, but again with the exception of the abovementioned deathtrap, it's all pretty uninspired.

 And since we're here: fuck the idea of a grenade only blowing up the top of someone's skull; that guy would have been wearing his torso as a very red, very wet hula skirt. Would have made a much cooler image, too.

 On the plus side, it's pretty eventful and there's a couple of twists - it's never boring, even though neither the events nor the twists are very interesting. I appreciate the balls of the... well, let's call it the post-ending, which goes so far into goofball territory that I can't disapprove of it. And there are some good lines in there, a couple funny situations; the script is not a total waste.
 The acting is great. Lulu Wilson's material may not be as good this time around, but she does an ace job anyways. And Seann William Scott makes for a convincing, threatening prick, even if he never gets to do anything much.

 Overall, though, this was a huge disappointment.

Becky

 One way to make me perk right up: reference the Into the Void opening credits in your movie's opening credits*. Do it on a notebook with animated teen doodles, as Becky does, and we're in business.

 Becky Hopper (Lulu Wilson) is a sullen thirteen-year old girl who's still mourning her mother a year after bereavement. She's a troubled girl, introduced as she's bullied at school and seemingly implied to be somewhere in the spectrum on some of the early scenes. She's bright and pretty funny, but you can imagine how hard it would be to live with someone as a parent.

 Pity her dad, then, for trying to move on. He takes Becky on holiday to a beloved lakeside cabin, and spoils everything by inviting his new girlfriend Kayla (Amanda Brugel) over... and telling his daughter he intends to re-marry. It goes as well as you'd expect.

 After Becky's run away to her hiding spot to brood, a murderous neo-nazi gang freshly escaped from prison and led by one Dominick (Kevin James) takes over the cabin looking for a key they'd hidden before they were put away. A key (marked with a proto-germanic symbol) that, of course, Becky has found and taken for herself.
 Kind of a Die Hard situation, then, with a (record scratch) thirteen-year-old girl wearing a cute woven animal hood in the McLane role. And it works brilliantly! Mostly because the character of Becky reminded me more of a latter-day Liam Neeson action role more than a Bruce Willis one, but on the opposite end of the unlikely-age spectrum.

 It's a stew of genres and influences: an indie drama frequently checking in on Becky's memories of her mother, a thriller with some very effective, tense scenes, a sprinkling of extremely bloody action. Home Alone and the aforementioned Neeson vehicles are a reference point, and it invokes the ghost of a slasher movie with its bloodlust and music (a cheeky, lively Friday the 13th-ish mix of music and breathy panting). I think my favorite thing about it is that despite having a rich seam of bloody gallows humor, the film plays all of its elements dead straight.

 The premise may be silly, but it's mostly rendered plausible by the way the script (by Nick Morris and Ruckus & Lane Skye) grounds its elements. The protagonist's shift from terrified teen to deranged killer feels earned, and the progression of events makes sense. The action is brutal and takes into account Becky's physical disadvantage at all times; She does spring back a little too quickly after being brutally manhandled, and also ignores a convenient gun at one point, but that's well within genre conventions.

 There are a few instances of overt humor here and there (the most obvious a rambo-2-referencing 'suiting up' montage that involves a star-shaped mirror) but that's pretty rare; most laughs come instead from how extreme things get.

 The filmmaking is great, with the cinematographer (Greta Zoula), editor (Alan Canant)  and directors (Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion) staging some elaborate scenes that cut between, say, the thugs escaping and some fragments of Becky's school life, or getting creative when Becky and Dominick talk over walkie-talkies. The film gets more traditional as it progresses, but things are always cleanly staged. The music (by Nima Fakhrara) is a good mix between ambiental Indie music and crazy mix of vocals and instrumental weirdness.

 And while all the actors are good in this, both Lulu Wilson and Kevin James do an excellent job with their characters; Wilson really sells both Becky's pain and her psycho determination, and James displays the sort of cult-leader charisma you'd expect out of his Manson-like character. The guy's deluded enough that he thinks he can win Becky over with a "we are not so different, you and I" spiel near the end.
 I also really liked his second in command Apex (Robert Maillet), who has a significant role as the lone thug with a little humanity. 

 Cap it off with some extreme levels of gore - wet, chunky, and detailed, more so than most horror movies (the FX crew clearly pulled out medical reference texts for this one), and we've got something special on our hands. It's a simple movie, but a wildly, viciously entertaining one.

*: Or maybe they're more indebted to Spiderverse, but I choose to think otherwise.