Quartile rating: 4.5/10 · 1 rating
Experimental film that follows up on the results of "Monkeyshines, No. 1". Once again, an Edison company worker moves around in front of the motion picture camera.
One of the earliest surviving motion picture experiments from Edison's lab, Monkeyshines No. 2 has virtually no plot or acting in any meaningful sense, and the primitive kinetoscope imagery is barely discernible. However, its historical novelty is genuinely extraordinary — these films represent humanity's first fumbling steps toward motion pictures, making them singular artifacts of technological and cultural history. The cinematography is rudimentary but marginally more developed than its predecessor. The 'ending' is simply the footage running out, with no narrative closure whatsoever.