Beyond Re-Animator (Brian Yuzna, 2003)

Thirteen years after Bride of Re-Animator was released Brian Yuzna and Jeffrey Combs unleashed the second sequel, Beyond Re-Animator. This time produced in Spain through the very uneven experiment Fantastic Factory, which also gave us great movies like Dagon - and stinkers like Rottweiler and Beneath Still Waters. It was an admirable project, and I think it injected some creative energy into the Spanish and European movie biz after all, even if it's quite forgotten nowadays. Beyond Re-Animator is one of the more successful entries, even if it has some mayor flaws - but I'll get to them later.

After Herbert West once again fucked up his experiments with the living dead, he's been in prison. One of the last persons to have seen him in action is a young boy, Howard Phillips, who now has grown up to a young doctor played by Jason Barry. After his sister got killed in the "accident" with West and a very milk-hungry zombie, he manages to sneak away one of West's syringes with the infamous green liquid and now he brings it back to the inventor, in the power of his new job as a prison doctor. Their only real enemy is the sadistic warden Brando (Simón Andreu), who both wants the body of Howard's new hot girlfriend and West's secret to make the capital punishment even more painful than it is - imagine the criminals dying for hours and hours and hours...

Beyond Re-Animator is basically a remake of the first one, just set in a prison than a hospital. Warden Brandon is Carl Hill, Howard Philips is Dan Cain, the movie begins with a failed and gory experiment ending in West being sent away - where he can begin again. Instead of patients he have prisoners to experiment on. I can't say it's a bad movie. It's well-made, gory, have some nice production values and Jeffrey Combs is excellent. It's not Yuzna's finest hour as a director, he still feels very unsure how to tell the story and many scenes just feels a bit awkward and not especially funny. But overall, it works. The worst thing though is the acting. Most of the cast are Spanish talents - and they overact like there's no tomorrow. Imagine a bad porn movie trying to be a real movie. Sure, they're dubbed to English to remove the accents - which might make it even more cheesier, but the original acting shines through and it's not good.

I remember some similar issues in Dagon and Faust (and that one also sports an awful "acting" gig by Swedish movie critic Ronny Svensson). I think it's a lot worse than most of the older European genre movies, but I think it has to do with - in this case - the director and in Dagon's case probably because the actors did a bad job in general.

Anyway, gonna stop with the whining. Beyond Re-Animator is at least not boring. It has a lot of fun special effects, some really graphic gore (the "death" of Santiago Segura might be the most extreme one) and a few really fun comedic scenes, where Penis vs. Rat is the best and most over-the-top one!

When I saw this movie the first time I wasn't that impressed. I probably expected something more, but it grows on you and in the end it delivers 90 minutes of gory, fun entertainment. Which can be enough sometimes. 

Comments

[Megatron]

"Beyond Re-Animator is one of the more successful entries, even if it has some mayor flaws"

It has flaws no doubt about that,but I thought it was entertaining.

"I can't say it's a bad movie. It's well-made, gory, have some nice production values and Jeffrey Combs is excellent."

I agree with you, it has flaws but Combs is damn good here and funny as well.

"It's not Yuzna's finest hour as a director"

I haven´t seen that much by him but I prefer Amphibious 3D(2010)instead of this one.

Amphibious 3D(2010) ha some flwas as well, but I liked parts of it very much....a creature feature that surprised me with it´s dark content.

"Anyway, gonna stop with the whining. Beyond Re-Animator is at least not boring."

It has some entertainment value.

"When I saw this movie the first time I wasn't that impressed. I probably expected something more, but it grows on you and in the end it delivers 90 minutes of gory, fun entertainment. Which can be enough sometimes."

Yeah, it does deliver but hardly in a groundbreaking way.

Good review, Fred.

[Fred Anderson]

To me Yuzna have directed three good films:

Progeny
Society
Amphibious 3D

I prefer him more as a producer!