My quick rating – 4.4/10. After being impressed with Die’ced a couple of years back, I was genuinely curious when Die’ced: Reloaded popped up. The thought of Jeremy Rudd finally getting the time and budget to finish what he started was exciting. Sadly, what we got feels less like a sequel and more like a Frankenstein patchwork job—half movie, half rerun.
The story brings back scarecrow-masked killer Benny, who’s set loose on Halloween night to carve up 1980s Seattle. The opening murder spree leans hard into practical gore effects, and they look great. Unfortunately, Benny doesn’t actually escape the asylum. Instead, a nurse accidentally releases him and then insists, “We can’t call the cops, we have to erase any trace he was ever at this hospital.” This, after explaining he’s been locked up for 17 years. That’s not just bad writing, that’s a Looney Tunes gag.
From there, we hit every slasher cliché like boxes on a grocery list. High school scene with pop music? Check. Halloween party with disposable victims? Check. Scenes that look suspiciously identical to the first movie? Double check. At a certain point, I started wondering if Rudd just dusted off the old footage, glued on some new scenes, and called it a day. The truth is, that is exactly what he did.
To the film’s credit, the kill sequences are a highlight again—bloody, practical, and occasionally hilarious when Benny suddenly channels the strength of ten dockworkers. Eden Campbell steps into final-girl territory, but she never fully sells the scream queen energy; her performance hovers between “damsel in distress” and “mildly inconvenienced.”
The original Die’ced ended with a decent twist, but here we get an extra ten minutes tacked on. That means more carnage, a peek at Benny’s unhinged mother, and a slightly more complete send-off. The problem is, those extra scenes don’t actually make the film feel new. It’s the same dish reheated with a splash of CGI blood for garnish.
In the end, you don’t need to watch both. Die’ced: Reloaded basically contains the entire first movie with a few bonus clips stapled in. If Rudd’s goal was closure, he delivered, but if it was to craft a worthy sequel, the result feels more like leftovers.
