RIPPER 2: LETTER FROM WITHIN

Molly Keller is locked in a psychiatric hospital with the belief that she is the incarnation of Jack the Ripper. The doctor treating her cannot find a solution to the evil that afflicts her, so he advises her to participate in a highly experimental treatment that will be her last chance for recovery. This is an intervention based on virtual reality that should help her mind regain control of her emotions. Molly agrees and is transferred to Prague, where Dr. Wiesser conducts the treatment. Here, the girl meets a group of young patients also undergoing the treatment, but as soon as the experiment begins, reality and fantasy start to merge, and Weisser's patients fall one after another under the blade of a hooded killer. In 2001, riding the wave of the renewed slasher post "Scream", a film titled "Ripper – Letters from Hell" was produced. The usual routine: teenage protagonists, a masked killer who kills with a white weapon, everyone is suspected, final twist. A mediocre film that was saved only by a certain creativity in the murders and the introduction of the figure of Jack the Ripper as a link between the killings. 2004, the sequel arrives. The poor success of the prototype, however, pushes the local distribution to hide the relationship and thus "Ripper 2 – Letters from Within" magically transforms into "Death Door – The Door to Hell". Title confusion oddities aside, this "Ripper 2" disappoints on all fronts, from content to form. Let's start by saying that, despite picking up right where the first film ended, we find ourselves with another actress playing Molly Keller, the protagonist. There was A.J. Cook of "Criminal Minds", here Erin Karpluk ("The Demon of the Ice") and we lose both in acting quality and physically... and let's be honest, when in a sequel they change the actors from the previous film without changing the characters, it's not easy to overlook, it creates that effect of mistrust that already makes you start badly in your disposition to enjoy. But that's not the problem with "Ripper 2", more than anything we're dealing with a film that really doesn't know what to tell. Directors Jonas Quastel and Lloyd A. Simandl have fun mixing the cards with continuous passages and supposed ones from physical reality to virtual reality with the sole effect of creating a real confusion in itself that, instead of involving the viewer and prompting them to ask questions, induces boredom. Then, rather unusually, this sequel is short on gore and violence, presenting anonymous murders and often relegating them to off-screen. On the other hand, however, it pushes the pedal on erotica in a long (and decidedly boring because repetitive) sequence set in a fetish club in Prague, with nude women, lesbian make-outs, and sadomasochistic games that smell a lot of futile filler to lengthen a film that has little or nothing to tell. The only interesting aspect of the story, namely the schizophrenic conflict within Molly that leads her to identify with Jack the Ripper, is too marginal to the point of being completely abandoned when the boogeyman materializes. Naturally, this also serves to muddy the waters in the function of a really unoriginal twist, but to relegate the main theme to oblivion is a rather questionable choice. In its place, there is an attempt to ride the wave of virtual reality and the potential it could develop in a basic idea that seems to want to recall that of "The Cell". I believe, however, that this same intuition was not very clear to the authors because we talk about virtual reality and scientific methods but we never see anything, only these guys in pajamas lying on hospital beds and the doctors talking by the bedside of the protagonist. Stop. Then, virtual reality or not, we do nothing but see the characters always wandering between the walls of the dilapidated palace and, on one occasion, through the city's alleys. As could be predicted, the characters have no characterization and serve simply as cannon fodder for a body count that is not engaging. But okay, we are in a series C slasher, that's not the fundamental problem. In short, this "Ripper 2"... pardon, "Death Door", really has nothing to offer, it continues tiredly and disloyally a story already short of breath to retrace it in a almost pedantic way. Useless and weak, avoidable even for slasher enthusiasts.