Stakeland 2 A.K.A. The Stakelander (2016)

The Director

Dan Berk/Robert Olsen

The Actors

Connor Paolo (Martin), Nick Damici (Mister), Laura Abramsen (Lady), Kristina Hughes (The Mother), A.C. Peterson (Bat), Steven Williams (Doc Earl)

The Trailer

The Cause

Vampirus/Religious Cult

The Story

"The world didn't die with a bang.  It died with a scream, lots of them and I heard them all.  There's nothing left; a dying landscape.  People stopped trying to rebuild a long time ago; we let it all fall apart and now everything's gone quiet.  Empty.  You can go for weeks without finding a soul.  Days come and night falls and we survive or we die.  All you really got are memories and tomorrow, if you're lucky.

New Eden was the only home I had left and she took it from me.  The Brotherhood called her "The Mother."  Those vamp worshipers finally found their messiah; the one sent to wipe the Earth clean of sin.  I was heading South into the Stakelands; if he was still alive, that's where I'd find him.  Mister.  The closest thing to family I had.  People knew of him, of his one-man war against The Brotherhood and the vamps.  He was legend.  He's the last hunter.  If I wanted to get to her I was gonna need his help." - Martin, voiceover

The Rundown

Back in 2016 I sat down with the task of covering the fairly small sub-genre of vampire-themed post-apocalyptic movies (a couple of forgettable duds, the wonderfully inspired Daybreakers, and all the adaptations of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, including the unlicensed one) including the original Stakeland.

Stakeland was a fine movie, it was stripped down and fairly aimless and clearly had almost no budget, but it was effective and grim.  But Stakeland had a pretty solid ending: Martin and Mister part ways and the boy, now capable of surviving on his own in the Stakelands moves on to his Canadian paradise with someone new in tow.

Stakeland 2 picks up ten years after the first movie.  New Eden has been attacked by The Brotherhood - a vampire worshipping cult from the first film - and they're being lead by an intelligent vampire Jebediah Loven from the first flm.  Martin, the sole survivor, escapes and goes back into the Stakelands searching for Mister so that he can have his help to get revenge.

Stakeland 2 is a fitting successor to the first movie, but it approaches things from a different angle.  While Nick Damici returned as writer/actor for the second entry in what he says could be a trilogy of films, his frequent collaborators Jim Mickle and Ryan Samul didn't return as director/co-writer and cinematographer.  In interview, Damici has said that Mickle chose not to return because he didn't want to go back to such a low-budget project and presumably this is why Samul didn't come back as well.  These absences aren't to the film's detriment.  Dan Berk and Robert Olsen do a fine job of directing and Matt Mitchell's cinematography really makes the most of the film's miniscule budget and few locations.  It's just that Mickle and Samul have such a striking visual shorthand with their films that it's immediately apparent that Stakeland 2 was handled by a different creative team.

The first question the movie has to answer is why we need to see more of Mister.  The character was the highlight of the first film but by his nature he was a very simple and even elemental character.  Bringing him back is simply trying to recapture something that could never be recaptured and to try and dig into who he is or was before the fall of humanity would be to ruin what makes him work.

The film doesn't delve too much into who Mister is, we get a few mentions from characters who knew him long ago that he had a wife and child who he lost but mostly he remains as much of a mystery as ever.  What we see instead, is a Mister who is finally starting to thaw out as he grows past his prime.  Mister is an aging gunfighter and the years of cold, calculated savagery in the Stakelands have worn on him.  He has grown more compassionate and less ruthless as Martin has grown to be more like he was in the first film.

The movie delves deeper into Mister and Martin's relationship, fully bringing their father/son dynamic into the foreground to be looked into.  The reason the vampire with scar over her eye kills Martin's family is because she knows Martin will lead her to Mister.  The vampire is a new kind that can reproduce and years prior, Mister killed her baby and took her eye.  The unspoken friction between the two is that Mister's actions brought about the death of Martin's family and though it never comes to the surface it's a point of contention that informs their interactions.

Nick Damici and Connor Paolo are wonderful onscreen together and this movie gives them a chance to flesh out their characters far more than they ever were able to in the first film.  Paolo has only grown as an actor and he shoulders the burden of being the film's lead very well.  Damici becomes more of a supporting player here but he's as good as he ever was.  Damici plays him with a wonderful cowboy swagger and incorporates the character's rejuvenated humanity without making him seem like he's become a sap out of nowhere.  I hope this series gets a third installment because I believe that Mister and Martin's relationship is going to go to a really interesting place in the third film.

The vampires take more of a back seat this time, though the world of the film hasn't improved in any way.  The Brotherhood has become more of a formidable foe and most of the vampires encountered throughout the film are servants of The Mother, who is able to control them somehow.  Largely they're used for cannon fodder but the film takes the concept of the smart vampires like Jebediah Loven from the first film and dips its toe into evolving them into something different than what they are.  Let's just say I don't think Martin saying "[Mister] is legend" was put in the script by accident.

In general, the film depicts humanity as a new threat.  We see a few examples of cannibalism and a Bartertown-esque community (complete with an ersatz Thunderdome) which serves as a vehicle to reunite Mister and Martin.  Humanity seems to be doing even worse now than it was in the previous movie with The Brotherhood destroying most human outposts and killing or converting their residents and cannibal slaver tribes taking the rest.  Only one group of "good" humans is shown in the film and their prospects aren't great.

I must also commend this film for two characters: Doc and Bat.  Doc (Steven Williams) and bat (A.C. Peterson), who can be seen in the photo below run a community where Mister and Martin take refuge.  Neither character is groundbreaking, Doc is your standard Danny Glover-esque grizzled sardonic black man and Bat is the usual overweight gruff biker.  What's interesting about the two is that they're a couple.

The movie doesn't make much of a thing out of the fact that they're gay, it's only mentioned a couple of times and nobody makes a thing out of it.  The reason I bring it up is because this sort of character relationship doesn't happen in popular culture.  Gay characters have certainly become more prevalent in recent years but they typically fall under the stereotypical dynamic where one partner is fey and one isn't.  If one is "ugly" the other is generally a very pretty man so as to show who the "man" and "woman" in the relationship are.  When both men are gruff and manly, especially if they're not traditionally handsome this relationship is often played for humor or to elicit disgust from the audience. 

Bat and Doc aren't an abnormal couple for the real world but for the world of fiction, particularly film they're a mythological beast.  To even intimate that they're together is abnormal but the film actually puts a pin in their relationship in a climactic moment when the two share a romantic kiss and say "I love you" that's so boldly in the face of popular cultures repressed homophobia that tolerates same sex pairings so long as they fit accepted ideas of beauty.  It's using character who are gay as characters rather than props and even in this "woke" world we live in, that is sadly not a common trend.

It's a reminder that genre film does what mainstream films can't or won't and can normalize social mores even with just one brief kiss between two character actors of the same gender.  It means very little in the movie but it means a lot toward demystifying the idea of queer characters in fiction.  I didn't catch this movie on the SyFy channel when it premiered but if they didn't cut the kiss from the broadcast then that makes it even more significant.

From a technical standpoint, Stakeland 2 is a massive improvement on the first.  I don't know the actual budget but from interviews I've gleaned that it was comparable to the first film so I'm guessing some money was saved by filming the movie in Canada this time.  The plains of Regina, Saskatchewan serve as a noticeable change of scenery from the woods of Pennsylvania used in the first film.

This movie uses a different color palette, featuring a lot more warm browns, oranges, and cremes that don't diminish the grim atmosphere but also make the movie feel a bit more lived-in.  The added benefit of this is that this movie features a lot more light than the first so we can see the action better, the vampires are shown in good lighting even at night and we get a good look at the practical effects which are solid for a low-budget film.

The story is far more motivated than the first film but that coupled with the new visual scheme and the change of Mister and Martin's character dynamic create a completely different feeling for this movie.  Stakeland 2 isn't any worse than the first one but I fear the stark differences between the two films and the fact that it premiered on the SyFy channel will serve to turn people off to the movie.  I assure you, though, the differences in the two movies are not a case of diminished returns, it's a lateral move.

Stakeland 2 isn't as stark or unique as the first movie.  It's a more traditional narrative and a more traditional use of setting and characters.  The chaotic alchemy that made the first movie is no longer present and that may be a deal-breaker for you but it shouldn't be.  Stakeland 2 never could have recaptured what made Stakeland work, I daresay no film ever will, but Stakeland 2 is a very solid low-budget effort and a worthy horror sequel which is its own kind of rare gem.  There's no way this movie should have been anywhere near as good as it is.  Treasure it.

The Shill

Stakeland 2 is available on Blu-ray, DVD, Amazon Instant and Netflix.

Next Time on Doomsday Reels

"I was masturbating behind those trees over there. "