The Witch: Part 2 - The Other One: Here We Go Again

I was thoroughly entranced by The Witch: Part 1 - The Subversion, a crazed mashup of evil scientists, ruthless assassins, and rebellious teens whose adolescence has been uniquely challenging. Yet even though The Witch: Part 2 - The Other One has all those elements to a degree, they're neither as prominent nor as playfully done. Writer-director Park Hoon-jung basically assumes we already know that Dr. Baek (Jo Min-soo) is a mad scientist; that the protagonist (Shin Si-a) is the counterpart to prior heroine Koo Ja Yoon (Kim Da-mi); and that a whole military industrial complex is funding the creation and the elimination of these two women warriors. What The Witch: Part 2 is missing, frankly, is a reason for being outside the introduction of a new character.

Luckily for us, this cinematic universe remains pretty entertaining. Once again, the set-up is a Davis versus Goliath story. Our poor nameless waif is being chased down by genetically engineered and genetically enhanced bounty hunters who are thirsty for mutant blood. There are a couple of narrative snags, like why go after your prey with weapons you know she's survived in the past when you could increase your chances of overpowering her if you simply doped her during one of her many food-binging episodes? But the history of humankind abounds with people making obvious mistakes over and over and there's nothing to suggest that the characters in The Witch: Part 2 are smarter so much as faster, stronger, and wilder than regular Joes. The people of the future are total animals.