#11 - Beyond Re-Animator (2003)
(dir. Brian Yuzna)
Set 13 years after the events of Bride of Re-Animator, Dr. Herbert West is now in jail. Without access to a lab or the chemicals needed to make his reanimation reagent, he is limited to smaller experiments on the prison's rodent population. Instead of bringing them back to life, he discovers a way to extract what he calls "Nano-Plasmic Energy" at the moment of death - essentially, he captures their souls. When a new prison doctor arrives, he brings a sample of Dr. West's reagent with him, and together they resume research into the reanimation of the dead, this time armed with West's new knowledge of the NPE.
Even though the original Re-Animator is one of my favorite '80s horror movies, and Bride of Re-Animator (which I recently saw for the first time) is a very solid sequel, I wasn't expecting much from this. A 13 year gap between sequels usually isn't a good sign, but I figured a Brian Yuzna film starring Jeffrey Combs must be at least a little bit entertaining... and I was wrong to doubt, because this rules. Combs is just as good as he always is, and the film does not hold back in any way in terms of wild ideas and crazy special effects. The majority of the effects are practical too, with CGI only used to supplement some of the more impossible physical effects.
It's a lower budget film than it's predecessors and definitely has some jank to it, but nothing that ruined the experience for me. It's a Spanish production and most of the cast and crew are Spanish, which means that some of the line delivery comes across as odd and some of the actors are completely overdubbed. It's also a little weird that the entire prison population and staff are Spaniards when it is presumably located in New England, but it really doesn't matter. Who cares about the actors' accents when you're watching a film that features a rat fighting a reanimated dismembered penis?
If you're a fan of the previous Re-Animator films, I definitely recommend this. It's a step down in a lot of ways, but I had so much fun with it that I can forgive the weaknesses.
Comments
Post a Comment