R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned (2022)

R.I.P.D. 2: Rise of the Damned arrives as a direct-to-video prequel to a 2013 film that few remember fondly, which is a polite way of saying nobody asked. Paul Leyden directs with the brisk indifference of a man fulfilling a contract. The Old West setting, the hellgate, the buffalo that trample our hero upon his return to Earth: all of it unfolds with the grim efficiency of a release that knows exactly which shelf it belongs on.

Where the film shows flickers of modern casting instinct is in its ensemble. The supporting roster is notably multiethnic, and the running gag that Roy and Jeanne manifest on Earth as two Black sisters is a deliberate comic choice, played for laughs and nothing more. Jeanne d'Arc herself is a capable co-lead, a warrior who overcomes her fear of fire to hurl a vial of Jesus' tears into the open gate. The film grants her competence without ever constructing an argument about it. Mayor Butterfield and the gold-hungry Clairborne supply a faint thread of greed as villainy, though the screenplay has no interest in following it anywhere uncomfortable.

The absences are instructive. No queer characters, no body politics, no neurodivergent interiority, no climate sermon dressed up as a mine cough. Joan of Arc becomes a demon-hunting agent of a supernatural bureaucracy, a fantastical repurposing with no ideological ambitions beyond getting her into a shootout. The result is a buddy-cop comedy that preaches nothing and explodes often. Twenty-five percent on Rotten Tomatoes feels about right, and the film's only real sin is being forgettable. There are worse crimes. There is also, apparently, a hundred-year minimum contract.