Horror Movie Review: Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge (2022)

The first Scare Package was a funny, bloody, and meta anthology horror that turned enough heads to guarantee a sequel. After all, it’s the horror movie way! Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge is sillier, more referential, and bloodier than the first. Like all good horror sequels, it had to up the ante and it does.

Featuring a host of writers and directors like Alexandra Barreto, Anthony Cousins, Jed Shepherd, Rachele Wiggins, Aaron B. Koontz, John Karsko, and Cameron Burns. It stars Jeremy King, Zoe Graham, Byron Brown, Rich Sommer, Kelli Maroney, Graham Skipper, Maria Olsen, Shakira Ja’nai Paye, and Emma Louise Webb.

Unsurprisingly, Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge is also an anthology film. Though, just like its predecessor, it has an extensively detailed and important wraparound story.

Following the events of the first Scare Package, a funeral is taking place for Chad. One that has an array of guests that all seem to know Chad it some odd way. It’s an unusual guest list for an unusual man. Proven when a video message from before he was killed reveals that he wants to play a game, Jigsaw style.

All the funeral attendees are knocked out by gas and wake up in a unknown place, forced by Chad to get out of their predicament by watching some horror films that contain clues. This is how we get to our shorts.

First up is Welcome to the ‘90s and it is a very strong start. Where a group of slasher movie final girls are totally relaxed with a killer on the loose. After all, they’re the final girls and they always survive. They literally live next door to a sorority house called ‘Sure to Die’. That is until this killer decides to change the rules.

It’s a brilliant first short that feels so very Scare Package. In that it’s silly, funny, really on the nose when it comes to references, but still delivers on the thrills.

Following that, we get a sequel to Scare Package’s The Night He Came Back Again! Part IV: The Final Kill called The Night He Came Back Again! Part VI: The Night She Came Back. If the title alone, and the fact that we’ve skipped number 5 completely, doesn’t make you laugh, Chad would like a word.

If you thought Part IV was absurdly fun, Part VI outdoes it in almost every way and has one of the best endings of any of the shorts. Watching these hilarious shorts about unkillable franchise villains will make you hope for even more nights where he, or she, comes back again.

The first drop in quality then comes with Special Edition. A sort of spoof of the Ring, but one that takes a serious tone and doesn’t fully explore the possibilities of what’s on offer. Although credit can be given for how much atmosphere this one has.

It’s We’re So Dead next, which starts off parodying Stand by Me with touches of Stranger Things before devolving into a mix of ReAnimator and David Cronenberg’s The Fly. If that sounds insane to your ears, wait until your eyes witness the madness. It’s another highlight of the film though.

Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge only has four shorts. Whereas the first film had six and we felt that at least one could have been cut. However, that doesn’t mean you’re getting short-changed here.

Instead, a lot more time is dedicated to the ‘wraparound’ segments, and just like the first movie, it dominates the opening and closing segments of the anthology. However, unlike the first movie, it’s not quite as good. Mainly because a lot of jokes fail to land, the meta stuff is excessive, and it starts to get quite nonsensical by the end. Whereas the varied quality in shorts of the first movie was the problem, here it’s the over-arching tale that derails Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge.

Although, not to the point that it’s isn’t a thoroughly enjoyable anthology horror. It delivers a ton of fun, with a really game cast, plenty of hilarity, and even more blood and guts. It was always going to be a tough task for Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge to reach the high set by the first movie, but it comes close. It’s certainly bigger, it’s certainly bolder, and it’s certainly bloodier.