The Following: Season 2: DVD Review

The Following: Season 2: DVD Review

Rating: R18
Released by Warner Home Video and Roadshow Home Ent

If the first season of The Following was guilty of anything, it was of betraying its premise and falling into a James Bond style presentation of its bad guy.

The premise of Scream scribe Kevin Williamson's psychological thriller pitted Kevin Bacon's flawed FBI agent Ryan Hardy against supposedly interned serial killer and cult leader Joe Carroll (played with delicious relish by James Purefoy) - its first season concluded with Carroll apparently blown to kingdom come.

This second takes up with an uneasy calm before the killing storm erupts and the once thought dead return to put Hardy's life in misery yet again.

That's half the problem with The Following. While the first half of the first season worked brilliantly as the cat and mouse game and betrayals played out, it was too long, a mini-series event spun into 15 episodes of predictably dark TV.

The second season falls into a similar trap with darkness and plentiful stabbings on hand to leave you feeling unsettled. But the drama this time feels more like melodrama than anything truly gripping and the fact you're prepared for not everyone to be who they seem proving to be more of a narrative hindrance this time around.

Bacon and Carroll work well, but really The Following would have worked much better as a short run event - it lacks the tension this time out and really makes you feel that the true blood of the series is lacking the bite it needs.

Extras: Featurettes, comic con footage, deleted scenes - a plethora of solid material