A Haunted House 2 (2014)

(On Cable TV, February 2015)  Even I am sometimes astonished at the kind of dumb comedy movie that I find funny, and I’m unwilling to go much further down the totem pole of stupidity than A Haunted House 2.  A Marlon Wayans parody of recent horror films (most notably Insidious, Sinister, The Conjuring and Paranormal Activity), A Haunted House 2 seemingly has no filter – given the onslaught of crude and puerile humor (usually accompanied by loud shrieks), I’d be wary of watching it with anyone else. (It doesn’t help that the sexual content of the film often goes beyond the limits of what’s usually seen in mainstream comedies.)  It fires ten gags per minute, and lands maybe one or two of those.  Still, that’s a lot of comic energy (especially from Wayans himself, willing to do anything for a laugh), and I can forgive long unfunny stretches if these are occasional smirks along the way.  I will admit that it’s not as good (if good is a word worth using) than the first one, which at least had one or two halfway decent moments and a semblance of thematic depth to its comical hijinks.  Still, I’m an easy mark for that kind of film, largely because unlike the bottom-of-the-barrel Friedberg/Setzer “parodies”, this one actually tries for laughs beyond simple re-creation of iconic sequences and slapstick violence.  I may feel guilty about it, but A Haunted House 2 gets an “eh, had a few laughs” from me.