A movie about which I grow increasingly affectionate the more time I have to reflect on it. With a story straight out of a mid-90s Robin Williams movie - vaguely rebellious, immature jokester teaches stick-in-the-mud to open up - and a sense of humor leaning towards the sort of cringey embarrassment comedy that I often have trouble with, I should most definitely not like this movie. Not one bit. But I think that what makes it so extraordinary is its…

A near perfect articulation of the anxieties wrapped up in virtual activity having real-world consequences (with the nice twist that those consequences are being enacted by a shadowy cabal that treats real people like virtual game pieces). I do miss the ghosts of the first one, but this one thematizes what the first one makes literal: the first one makes that feeling of ghostliness and mystery behind online interactions into a literal ghost. Here, they might as well be. What's…