Lamberto Bava's second demonic outing sees the Demons of the title escape from the now abandoned and walled up city where the last film was set by forcing their way through a camera of an intrepid TV crew, through someones TV set, and into the middle of Sally's birthday party. She's gonna get one present that she wasn't banking on. So is just about everybody else in the high tech tower block where she lives.

I really liked the first of the Demons films and so was looking forwards to this, but it is a disappointment in a lot of ways. It's virtually a remake of the original, only with the action moved to a big tower block this time, and there's less of the things which made the original great - no mad motor bike action, toned down soundtrack, and generally less madness altogether.

The demonic transformations still look pretty good, there's still blood and gore aplenty as they go on the rampage through the residents trapped inside the tower, but it just lacks the atmosphere of the original. Someone had been watching Gremlins as well, the demon that emerges partly formed from a child victim looks like a gremlin with an attitude problem. The doggy transformation looks somewhat false.

There are some nice touches though. The battle in the underground car park was good, and I enjoyed the scene where man and demon battled on the elevator cables. Sally's change into a demon was done well, as were the camera crew filming in the abandoned city. The trouble is, it is basically the same film as last time, only lacking that special touch.

We're still are no closer to answering the mystery of the demons either. Who are they, where did they come from? We're not going to find that out here. There's just more mystery, a fully equipped TV studio which is seemingly something to do with them, someone who carries on filming and narrating when the crew of investigative reporters have all been butchered. It's just mystery, with only another reading of Nostradamus to help things along.

Not actually a bad film, just not what I expected from a sequel and missing a lot of the originals charm. Still, it is a frantic enough watch, looks good for the most part, and the action is fairly unrelenting. There are far worse ways to pass 90 minutes, this is worth a shot.

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