It’s been a year since Sean Barker became the Guyver. By day he draws mysterious images from his dreams. By night he brutally murders criminals. (A guy’s gotta have hobbies.) Although Sean insists it’s the Guyver unit that kills people, not him, his girlfriend from the first film is understandably creeped out by his unusual night habits. After the couple splits up, Sean learns about an archeological dig which has uncovered cave paintings like the visions from his dreams. He leaves everything behind and heads to Utah.
There he meets the daughter of the head archeologist, Cori Edwards (Kathy Christopherson). Sean wastes no time pursuing Cori on the rebound as he becomes a worker at the dig site, uncovering alien artifacts and skulls. When a monster attacks the camp, Sean has to do his Guyver thing. What Sean doesn’t know is the Chronos corporation, which was seemingly destroyed in the previous film, is secretly financing the dig to uncover alien weaponry. Some of his coworkers are in fact Zoanoids: the human/monster hybrids he fought in the previous film.
While the original Guyver film targeted the children’s market with a PG-13 rating, the sequel goes full R. It also dumps the forced comic relief, instead trying to emulate the darker tone of the manga source material. This is fine and dandy, but Screaming Mad George has departed as co-director, which is immediately clear as the creature designs are a little less inspired this time around. Also gone is Brian Yuzna, who served as the producer on the first one. On the other hand, the Guyver suit itself is noticeably streamlined and looks more like metal than rubber.
Replacing Jack Armstrong’s Guyver is David Hayter, the voice of Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake. To my knowledge, it’s only one of a handful of times Hayter has ever done live-action work. It’s surprising that he swung a leading role for his first real acting gig. No, the acting isn’t great, but does it need to be in a movie like this? It’s pretty much a Lifetime movie for dudes. I can’t find any reason to fault that. In fact, the only major misfire is how many shots are completely out of focus in this otherwise professional production.
Guyver 2 is obviously the superior picture by normal standards, even if its focus puller needs an eye examination, but I found the campiness of the first film to be more exciting. That film took such care to cast actors with strong facial features that you never forgot who’s who in their monster forms. The fights were a lot more frequent and the practical monster transformations were more creative than the mid-90s CGI used here. I don’t want to compare them too much, though, because I enjoyed both tremendously.
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