"From Dusk Til Dawn" was a pretty good movie as far as mindless shoot-em-up vampire movies go, but I just couldn’t see a sequel being much good. So I skipped it. Then someone told me I should see the third one, and I figured with a title as cool as “The Hangman’s Daughter” it deserved a shot. All I did was confirm my suspicions that it wouldn’t make a good sequel.

It does follow suit with the original pretty well. It starts out as a tale of groups of people, not connected at first and having nothing to do with monsters. This time it’s an old West story which switches to a vampire attack towards the end. There are a number of different characters involved: the hangman, his innocent daughter, an outlaw and his crew, an outlaw wannabe, an older soldier, and a pair of missionaries. The outlaw escapes being hung and takes the daughter who has been abused by her father. The soldier is carrying something valuable to Spanish revolutionary Poncho Villa and ends up traveling with the missionaries.

After some conflict to intertwine all the groups they make their separate ways to the same destination, a place to rest for the night, an inn that is really a bordello of vampires. They find themselves in a struggle for survival against creatures that want them for supper, but there’s something special about the hangman’s daughter, something that the vampires want. The humans use this to their advantage, but will she be their ticket to safety or their doom?

It sounds like a story that could work, but the elements just don’t come together well enough. Some of the characters are pretty good, but some aren’t so much. My biggest disappointment are the missionaries. I was really hoping to identify with them since they are the closest to my own frame of mind, but they turn out to be more like caricatures than solid characters.

The outlaw wannabe is underdeveloped and feels like an unnecessary plot element to fill some time. He seems like he’s important for a while, but then the idea just kind of drops off without a satisfactory conclusion. The outlaw and the soldier are the best. They feel like they actually have a little depth and react in ways that fit. The hangman is almost in that league, but he has a backstory that is not explored fully enough to be satisfying.

Once we get from character development to mad monster mayhem I figured it would become a tense thrill ride much like the first movie. Unfortunately, I was simply unimpressed by the action choreography and scene composition. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what it was I didn’t like without going back to watch the movie again which I don’t care to do. Maybe I’m just spoiled on Jackie Chan brand action scenes. Next to something like that this movie just feels like a chaotic mess.

Maybe I expect too much out of vampire action movies. I did get a kick out of the first movie; I just couldn’t get excited about this one. Maybe it’s my friend’s fault for talking it up so much in which case now that you’ve heard it sucks maybe you’ll like it more. When someone loves something THAT much can it ever live up to the hype for the next person?