There’s bad, and then there’s Ghoulies II. A sequel to a film that shouldn’t have existed in the first place, Ghoulies II is the cinematic equivalent of a grease trap catching fire at a state fair. Directed by Albert Band—whose name should set off alarms at this point—it’s a movie about little rubber goblins causing chaos at a failing carnival. That’s it. That’s the whole pitch. Somewhere out there, a cocaine-fueled exec in 1987 greenlit this thing and probably thought he was funding the next Gremlins. Instead, he got Garbage Pail Kids: Satan’s Revenge.
The plot, and I use that word with a generous pat on the head, revolves around a traveling carnival attraction called “Satan’s Den”—a haunted house experience so low-rent it makes Spirit Halloween look like Disneyland. Run by a sad-faced dude named Larry (Damon Martin) and his drunk uncle Ned (Royal Dano, possibly actually drunk), the attraction isn’t exactly packing in the crowds. Enter the Ghoulies, those rubbery, saliva-drenched rejects from the bottom shelf of a Spencer’s Gifts, who crawl out of a barrel of glowing goo and decide to move in.
Why? Who knows. Maybe they like the smell of cotton candy and regret.
Let’s talk about the Ghoulies for a moment. They’re supposed to be demons or creatures or something vaguely satanic. But they look like the unholy spawn of a melted Boglin and a hand puppet your weird uncle made in prison art class. There’s the green one with buck teeth, the cat-faced one with jaundice, and the fishy-looking thing with an expression like it just saw your browser history. Their method of attack? Biting, clawing, vomiting, and occasionally pulling someone into a toilet—because you can never let a good Ghoulies-toilet joke go to waste.
The movie tries to build suspense, but it’s like watching a haunted hayride directed by a tax accountant. Scenes shuffle along with all the urgency of a DMV line. Characters enter, say something irrelevant, then die in a way that’s supposed to be ironic but mostly just looks like the result of a foam puppet being thrown at them off-camera. The kills range from “barely edited” to “did they just reuse that shot from Puppet Master?”
Larry, our protagonist, is the kind of bland, forgettable everyman you’d expect in a movie like this. He has all the charisma of a wet paper towel, and yet he’s still the smartest person in the movie simply by virtue of not licking any of the Ghoulies. His love interest, Nicole (Kerry Remsen), exists solely to scream, run, and wear tank tops. There’s no chemistry between them, but in fairness, there’s no chemistry between anyone in this film. Not even between the living and the dead.
Royal Dano, bless him, plays the alcoholic uncle like he’s auditioning for a remake of Carny: The Last Ride of Dignity. He slurs, stumbles, and mutters vaguely philosophical things that are supposed to give his character “depth,” but mostly sound like he’s trying to remember what decade he’s in. When he finally gets eaten by a group of Ghoulies, it’s unclear whether he’s acting surprised or just reacting to his liver finally giving up.
The carnival setting should have been a slam dunk. There’s so much potential—freak shows, funhouses, creepy clowns. But Ghoulies II wastes it all. Instead of using the location for creative horror, it sticks the monsters in random spots and films them wiggling around like toddlers in rubber suits. The haunted house sequences are less “spooky” and more “employee training video for OSHA violations.”
At one point, the Ghoulies hijack the haunted attraction, and because the crowd thinks it’s all part of the show, business starts booming. This is the one clever idea in the film—and the movie immediately fumbles it. Instead of doubling down on the satire, it trips over itself trying to be serious. Soon enough, a corporate villain shows up—because nothing says “scary” like a guy with a clipboard demanding ticket revenue reports—and the movie switches gears into “let’s stop the Ghoulies” mode with all the momentum of a tricycle stuck in molasses.
The finale involves a giant animatronic Ghoulie that appears out of nowhere like a kaiju made of Play-Doh and dog hair. There’s a showdown. Things explode. People scream. And somewhere in the distance, Albert Band probably lit a cigar with the budget and whispered, “That’ll keep the kids quiet.”
Visually, the film is aggressively ugly. Washed-out colors, clunky sets, lighting that resembles a flashlight taped to a ceiling fan—this is a movie that looks like it was shot entirely through the bottom of a dirty snow globe. The cinematography seems allergic to coherence. Every other frame is out of focus or badly timed. You could fall asleep during a chase scene and wake up thinking you dreamt a scene from a VHS instructional video called So You’ve Been Bitten by a Puppet Demon.
The music? Synth cues so generic they might have been composed by a sentient Casio keyboard in protest. Every scene is drenched in tones that scream “off-brand Scooby-Doo episode,” occasionally interrupted by electric guitar stings so abrupt they feel like jump-scares for your eardrums.
Final Verdict:
Ghoulies II is a sequel to a film nobody remembers for a franchise nobody asked for, featuring monsters nobody fears and characters nobody likes. It tries to be horror, it tries to be comedy, and it ends up being the cinematic equivalent of sticky carnival floor gum—chewed, spat out, and forgotten under the tilt-a-whirl of bad decisions.
Watch it only if:
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You’re doing a puppet-themed horror binge and have already suffered through Demonic Toys and Hobgoblins.
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You want to punish your friends for something they did in 1998.
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You miss the smell of burnt popcorn and broken dreams.
Everyone else? Stay away from this carnival. The only real horror here is the fact that it got made. Twice.
