“A Haunted House 2” is not a good movie. The writing is lazy and the pop cultures jokes are tired and cliche, but the film does get a few laughs mainly thanks to the efforts of lead actor and co-screenwriter Marlon Wayans.

In “A Haunted House 2,” Malcolm [Marlon Wayans] has managed to escape from his possessed girlfriend, Kisha [Essence Atkins] from the first film to move in with his new non-possessed girlfriend, Megan [Jaime Pressly]. Soon after Malcolm moves in with Megan and her two kids, strange things start happening around the home, including a possessed doll, an imaginary friend/ghost and a cursed box. From there, the film kind of degrades into a bunch of loosely organized jokes with a lot of sex and swearing plugged in where necessary.

For the most part “A Haunted House 2” is bad, but there were a few laughs to be salvaged from the wreckage. Wayans is pretty adept at a physical comedy, so seeing him attempt to fight butterflies with nun-chucks or destroy a cardboard box with a shotgun and samurai sword is pretty entertaining. There is an unbearably long scene involving a naked Wayans and the possessed doll that I could have done without.

“A Haunted House 2” does do a pretty good job of making the film look like another “Paranormal Activity” clone, but other than that there really isn’t a lot of good things to say about how the film looks. The effects are pretty bad, but I was surprised by some of the more gory scenes in the film. They were by no means horror movie quality but they were surprisingly on target for the genre.

As a whole, “A Haunted House 2” is another in a long line of bad horror-movie parodies. Without Wayans it would be barely watchable, but thanks to his manic physical comedy the film gets a few more laughs than it may deserve.

1/5