Becky was an outrageous home invasion thriller that made for ideal late-night entertainment.  The movie didn’t necessarily warrant a sequel but, if it set out to be as fun as its predecessor, I’d welcome it.  After watching Wrath of Becky, I wish I had reconsidered.

Wrath of Becky doesn’t pick up exactly where the first film left off.  The now-orphaned titular “final girl” (Lulu Wilson, reprising her breakout role) doesn’t stay in foster homes for very long.  After sucking up to her new foster parents, she splits with her dog Diego and goes on the run while practicing survival and combat skills.  When she finally settles in with a confidable guardian, Elena (Denise Burse), a petty dispute between Becky and some local jerks turns into a vendetta, eliminating Elena and Diego and leaving Becky on her lonesome yet again.  Putting those much-practiced skills to the test (and learning that the crooks are a gang of alt-right extremists), Becky is on the hunt for revenge. 

As badly as Wrath of Becky wants to stay faithful to the bonkers-level of action and comedy, but the sequel feels as if it’s been made by people who are out of touch with the material.  Scratch that: Wrath of Becky feels like it’s been made by people who haven’t seen the first movie.  For this follow-up, filmmakers Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion have been tagged out by another duo, Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote (Angel wrote the John Wick-ian screenplay, with he and Coote sharing story credits).  The replacements, who previously wrote and directed another dull home invasion thriller titled The Open House, fail to match the energy and tension the filmmakers before them created so well. 

For starters, Angel and Coote completely ruin Becky.  Instead of playing up her amateur qualities that made her so oddly endearing, the “new and improved” Becky has been crafted as a violent maniac who will kill at a moment’s notice and has no problem using any weapon.  She’s also brash, unhinged, and emotionally cold.  Showing her professionalism as an actor who swallows her pride and accepts probable misguided direction for her character, it severely bums me out to report that Lulu Wilson’s performance is a lemon.  She’s having fun, but it’s a grating change in character that never sets in.

The villains are treated as buffoons who are simply seat-filling as antagonists waiting to be targeted and killed.  The baddies in Becky, vile neo-Nazis led by a career redefining performance from funnyman Kevin James, were slick and menacing.  They worked because their portrayals provided a contemporary reflection of the ugliest corners of society, and they were genuinely intimidating on the surface.  The sequel tries to find that contemporary connection with its younger fascists, but the gang’s one-dimensional presence doesn’t sink its teeth into anything relatable outside of a cartoon, and their leader (Goon’s Seann William Scott) is a stiff bore.

Those going into Wrath of Becky without seeing its predecessor may have a more vibrant reaction to it than those who are expecting more.  However, I imagine most people who are seeking out Wrath of Becky are from the latter camp, and I imagine that crowd will be very disappointed by the film’s plethora of bad ideas.

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Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie