The Jester 2 is directed by Colin Krawchuk, and the cast includes Michael Sheffield, Kaitlyn Trentham, Jessica Ambuehl, Dingani Beza
My Thoughts On The Jester 2
While I wasn't a huge fan of the first Jester movie, I did think it had something interesting going for it at it's core, it just didn't execute it very well.
On paper, it promised a duel of brains and creativity, a kind of battle where the rules are never fully clear, but in practice, though, the movie struggled to pull it off.
So now we have The Jester 2, a sequel nobody probably asked for, yet here we are.
Here, we get Max (Kaitlyn Trentham), who is the kind of lead you want to root for. Max is curious, determined, and genuinely interested in magic, and I liked how Trentham shows her intelligence and resourcefulness, with little flashes of cleverness that hint at the character she could be.
But most of the time, Max is just on the defensive, running from one scare to the next, and it's quite frustrating. You keep thinking, “Why isn’t she using her skills to fight back?”
There are moments near the end where she finally does, but it comes too late and feels rushed, and the movie missed a chance to make her cleverness part of the story from the start, and to make you feel like she’s constantly thinking two steps ahead of the Jester, played again by Michael Sheffield.
And yes, I’ll admit, he still looks fairly unsettling to me.
His movements, his grin, his overall presence are visually striking, but I didn’t feel the same tension I remembered from the first film with regards to him.
Here, he’s on screen too much, and his tricks start to feel repetitive, and you keep waiting for that spark of unpredictability that will make you jump or squirm, and it rarely came.
Sometimes less really is more.
The supporting characters are also unfortunately barely given any space to matter here either, which is nothing new to be fair, but I wish the film had taken the time to give them personalities or stakes that made me care, because without that, their fates don’t carry much weight, and the world around Max all feels pretty hollow as a result.
I can certainly see where the filmmakers were trying to do more than just a simple slasher, and there are hints about the Jester’s origins, whispers of dark magic, and suggestions that Max’s skills might somehow connect her to him.
I liked the concept, but it’s never fully explored, with these threads feeling like half-finished puzzles that are fairly interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying. You want to know more about how the Jester operates, why he’s doing this, and what the stakes really mean beyond “he kills people.”
Some jump scares also telegraph themselves far too early, and I think a lot of people will see them coming a mile off, and it all would have worked much better if it had engaged with its central idea more.
Max as a magician could have led to some clever, inventive sequences, a sort of chess match between her illusions and the Jester’s dark tricks, and there was a real opportunity for creativity and tension, for moments to make you think, but it almost never materializes.
Much like the first film, I still think the concept is solid, but the movie doesn’t quite know what it wants to be.
The Jester 2 had big ambitions, but it feels like a trick that doesn’t quite come together, flashy on the surface, but hollow underneath.
No doubt we will get a Jester 3 at some point, maybe 3rd time lucky?