Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

Starring Jeffrey Combs, Jason Barry, Bárbara Elorrieta, Elsa Pataky, Santiago Segura, Simón Andreu, Tommy Dean Musset,

Directed by Brian Yuzna

Expectations: Low.

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Let me just start off by saying that Beyond Re-Animator is a lot better than I expected, but it still doesn’t come close to the original. It’s about as good as the previous entry, Bride of Re-Animator, but arguments could be made and it all really comes down to preference anyway. Overall, I preferred this one to the last one if only because the story was different and wasn’t so much of a cookie-cutter redo of the original.

The film opens with a young boy and his friend camping outside their house. Some strange noises prompt them to investigate. The noises turn out to be a lurking zombie with no jaw and one hell of a tongue, who kills the kid’s sister right in front of him and then tries to guzzle down the milk left on the counter. The cops come and arrest the man responsible who was found playing around in the adjacent graveyard, one Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs). As he’s put into the police cruiser, he drops a syringe of reagent which the kid retrieves. Fourteen years later the child has struggled to figure out how that sister-killing zombie was possible and it leads him to the medical profession. He gets a job at the prison where West is held and the two start up a relationship similar to the West/Cain dynamic of the first two films.