how far backwards did you have to bend in order to contort yourself into defending a Z-grade shlock horror film that in any other era would have been churned out by The Asylum alongside Transmorphers and Almighty Thor

Exactly. The first was what most of us expected.  A cheap gimmicky cash grab with no heart.   I suspect this one isn’t going to be much better.   80 schlock horror had heart, which the first one of these didn’t even attempt to have 

Yeah, no to all of this. The original Blood and Honey genuinely sucked, a bog-standard generic slasher movie that thought just putting Pooh and Piglet masks on the killers would be enough to count, and with an unforgivably abrupt “not even trying” ending. It’s great if the sequel improves on that, truly, but let’s not…