Single White Female 2: The Psycho (2005)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

CAUTION: Plot spoilers present.PR executive Holly Parker breaks up with her boyfriend & moves out of her shared apartment when she catches her best friend & co-worker Jan Lambert sleeping with him. She moves into the apartment of Tess Kositch, a painfully shy nurse who desperately needs a friend. But as soon as she settles in, Holly notices a strange number of behaviours with Tess, who has a history of convincing her friends to kill themselves in suicide pacts that she keeps getting out of. Tess also kills some of the patients in her care & frequents an underground S&M club. As Holly tries to come to terms with her new friend's lifestyle, Tess plans to drive Holly to suicide, first by killing off her friends.SINGLE WHITE FEMALE was a thriller that became a hit during the early 1990s – one of a number of psycho-thrillers that made their name at that time. Along with Basic Instinct & the bunny-boiler Fatal Attraction, Single White Female was part of a new era of thriller, which concerned itself less with traditional boogeymen & more with dangerously unstable female characters who latch onto their prey like a lion hunting a gazelle & wreak havoc in their target's families. Despite not exactly leaving the door open for a sequel, SWF somehow managed to spawn a direct-to-video sequel with Single White Female 2: The Psycho in 2005, a good thirteen years after the original came out.I had a sinking feeling when I hired the DVD & saw the names of Andy Hurst & Ross Helford on the sleeve as the writers – these two had made their name writing various sequels to the classic John McNaughton thriller WILD THINGS, which was actually a parody of the same kind of film that SWF belonged to. What works for a thriller parody doesn't quite work for a serious film like SWF 2. Needless to say, the film doesn't get very far.The main problem with a direct-to-video sequel such as SWF 2: The Psycho (yeah, I know, the title needed a lot more work) is that you're trying to hit a niche market – fans of early 1990s' psycho-thrillers, mainly – but by hiring a pair of writers who had made themselves known for their parodies of the very genre your film is in, the hope of a serious film goes right outside the window. Indeed most fans of the original film had trashed this sequel badly due to this very reason. But on the other side of the coin, the film emerges remarkably better than I had initially hoped would happen. Helford & Hurst actually manage to do something serious for a change, although they drop the numerous threesomes that come in their bread-&-butter scripts (the Wild Things sequels) & replace it with a much more restrained thriller. It is quite strange to see that with the original, Jennifer Jason Leigh & Bridget Fonda were already big stars when they started work on SWF, yet went ahead with baring their bodies – yet here, Kristen Miller & Allison Lange are complete unknowns but must have had 'no-nudity' clauses put into their contracts, judging by the fact that they both don't appear naked. I suspect that had they allowed themselves to appear starkers, they would have gotten more fans than what ultimately transpired here. Other than that, I had no problem with the acting.The story is another issue – I didn't buy the heroine's plight due to her character being a complete floozy – Kristen Miller's PR executive deliberately has sex with her client for a promotion yet dumps him when her friend & co-worker does it with him (something that would have worked better were this a Wild Things sequel) & goes through her new friend's personal belongings & spies on her. This I didn't like. Still, the film is not a total loss – the thriller mechanics, once they kick in, do the job reasonably. But as far as sequels go, Single White Female 2: The Psycho is far from what the original film deserved.

As a straight-to-DVD sequel made some 13 years after everyone had long forgotten about the original movie, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE 2: THE PSYCHO (what a useless sub-title!) doesn't disappoint. By that, I mean it's as defunct as you imagine it's going to be, a slightly cheesy follow-up to the first film featuring none of the same actors and an all-too-familiar script.As DVD bargain bin fodder goes, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE 2 is far from the worst I've seen. The most interesting thing about it is the story, which avoids cliché for the first half and sets up an interesting situation in a love triangle that centres around a PR agency in New York. You're left guessing as to who the titular psycho is. Things gradually become more predictable towards the ending, and the climax is just as you'd expect, but for the most part it's not too bad and it held my interest.One interesting thing about the production is TV director Keith Samples, who directs this film like it's a softcore erotic thriller, such as the ones Shannon Tweed starred in (endlessly) during the 1990s. Every actress is required to do at least one underwear or semi-nude scene, all the women wear low-cut, loose fitting clothing, and Samples spends an inordinate amount of time ogling female flesh.While the cast is nothing to write home about, I quite enjoyed the performance from the unfamiliar actors. Kristen Miller headlines and makes Holly a tough, sympathetic lead for the most part, while Allison Lange does well to play it understated for much of the running time. Todd Babcock and Brooke Burns are less effective, but certainly passable enough for this genre.So, in summation, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE 2 is just about par for the course for this sort of film. It's certainly fast-paced and held my attention for the running time. Given that I didn't like the original movie at all, I found this a step up despite the obvious flaws.

In New York, the PRs colleagues and roommates Holly Parker (Kristen Miller) and Jan Lambert (Brooke Burns) are disputing a promotion in their agency. The unethical Jan deceives Holly and sends her to Chicago; meanwhile, she seduces Holly's boyfriend David Kray (Todd Babcock), in the opening of the fancy restaurant of his own, and they have one night stand. When Holly arrives back home, she finds that David cheated her with Jan, and she decides to move to a new apartment. She schedules a visit with the needy Tess Kositch (Allison Lange), and they become roommates and friends. When Tess cuts and dyes her hair identical to Holly's style, she sees that her new roommate is obsessed on her. When Holly follows Tess to the underground night-club "Sin", she realizes that the girl is deranged. But Tess wants to be her friend and put Holly out misery, eliminating her former bad friends."Single White Female 2: The Psycho" is practically a remake of the original movie. Since the beginning, the viewer knows who the killer is; inclusive it is written in the synopsis of the DVD. But the unknown cast has good performances, I found Kristen Miller very beautiful and elegant and in spite of being predictable, this film also entertains. The shameful DVD does not have any Extra, subtitles or closed caption. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Mulher Solteira Procura 2" ("Single Woman Seeks 2")

I'm not exactly sure of the reasoning behind the subtitle "The Psycho"...a tad unnecessary if you ask me. Then again, so is the whole movie.This "sequel" takes place in the big busy city where two roommates/business partners eventually clash, forcing one to move out and (if you didn't see this coming like a freight train) into the apartment of a lonely quiet girl who turns out to be an obsessive nut case (with an appreciation for S&M...hmm). This movie is pretty much the same as the original, save for some different plot twists and turns here and there that lead up to what might be the most boring climax in movie history, taking place in an apartment building hallway. What fun.I agree with what one person said about the "psycho's" wig in the first part of the movie being terrible, but what was worse was the wretched black bob wig worn by the main character's ex-roommate in an attempt to make her look sexy and exotic...needless to say, if Drew Barrymoore's character in SCREAM had an evil twin, she would look like this...