Some of you will be familiar with this film because it was very successful in Thailand and its buzz reached our shores. It is a name-only sequel to the solid yet way tamer Art of The Devil.<br /><br />Long Khong shows that American slasher films have made their mark on the world--feels a lot like a late '90s slasher entry...In other words, the film has a heavy Western influence in style and storytelling. It even has strong gory deaths like those in some contemporary Western movies such as Hostel, Aja's Hills, and Torched (not that it's a ripoff or anything, just pointing out a similarity). It also was interesting to see a film from Thailand with Thais as sorcerers as this is a common trait of '80s Hong Kong horror flicks that I enjoy--e.g., Seeding of a Ghost and The Devil. It also owes those films a nod for using their gimmicks--gory curses, animal body horror, eating of sick sh!t/puking, et al.<br /><br />The first forty minutes or so of this movie coulda gone by a lot quicker. The background story is that a teenage boy with a wicked stepmom tries to catch the beautiful bitch in the act of an affair. This backfires and leads to stepmamasan's extramarital lover terrorizing them--the kid and his snoopy friends--with a gun. They get away and then the brats decide to go to a sorcerer to cast a spell for revenge. Next thing ya know, lover boy has an attack of fish-hooks-erupting-through-the-skinitis and the ol' lady starts going off her nut and they see 'er stickin' 'erself in the leg and then she just sort of goes into the background for a li'l while.<br /><br />Later down the line (months, possibly years), the group of kids has a reunion at their friend-with-the-f'ed-up-stepmother's house and, conveniently, stepmom's still hanging around--though she seems pleasant enough. But guess what? She is way into black magic and wants some revenge for herself. Gory set-pieces include some cool torture scenes (boiling kettle of water poured into the agape mouth of a young man with drug-induced paralysis and the use of a blowtorch on his shins and their subsequent skinning) and some nice and gruesome body curses (the aforementioned fish hooks, lizard's burrowing out of a man's back, a girl who claws her eyes out and has her face boiled off). There is also an Asian ghost story spin to the whole thing to get it just a little more complicated.<br /><br />As a horror movie, Art of the Devil 2 is not very original and its pacing in the beginning could've been a lot faster. One of the things that made it hard to follow (especially being as there were no subtitles on this bitch) was the fact that too many times flashbacks were used as exposition--gimme a break, man, I'm an American...Just keep it simple, will ya? Also, even though this movie didn't exactly scream for nudity, it would've elevated my grading of it by a point.<br /><br />It was entertaining enough as a horror film though and the bloody-as-hell ultra-violence on display in the second half of the film makes up for the deficiencies of the rest of this thing, in my opinion. For fans of hard gore and torture, this is pretty much a must-see...if you weren't already aware of the hype. Give it a look--8/10.