Today I end the Re-Animator trilogy with Beyond Re-Animator. Again, there is not really that much to say about the movie. I will say it again: I wish I could do video reviews. I could make all of these funny, insightful, long, entertaining, and eventually I would be noticed and start making money off the reviews as well! Sadly, I lack the tech to do such videos so for now I give you my humble readable reviews. Because it has no real, redeeming value and is, more of a fun camp film and because I do not have as much to say, I will be giving away SPOILERS.
Beyond opens with continuity errors. At the end of Bride, both West and Cain are seemingly buried alive under rocks after the mortuary next to West’s lab caves in. One assumes that both of them are dead, but it turns out they both survived. I know that at the end of Reanimator, it is implied that West died but it still had that 1950’s B-movie feel of the “What If?” ending and we don’t actually see West die, we only see him an a seemingly inescapable predicament. At the end of Bride, however, there really is no way they could have survived, so like with Dr. Hill’s head not being squashed, so too are the deaths of West and Cain retcond. Cain is not in Beyond but it is mentioned he is alive.
The movie opens up the same night that Bride ended. We see some kids having a camp-out in their backyard. The year is 1990 (the year Bride of Re-Animator came out). One of the boys is telling the other ghost stories to make the movie ironic. When the boy who lives there goes into the house, in a few minutes, his older sister is attacked by one of West’s zombies. West meanwhile is trying to undo the evil he has created because as has always been implied, West is not evil, just misguided, obsessed with his work, arrogant, pretentious, and seems compelled to do the things he does as if he cannot help himself sometimes. He ends up being arrested that night and drops the syringe of re-agent, which the boy whose sister was killed picks up. He is sent to prison with the help of Cain’s testament against him because apparently after everything, finally Cain snaps back to sanity. The movie then flash-forward’s to thirteen years later (2003, the year Beyond Re-Animator came out). The good doctor is up to his old experiments with the little resources he has trying to figure out why his experiments in the past always went wrong. He figures out that life is not only chemical as he previously speculated but also electrical. He discovers the NPE or Nano-Plasmic Energy which is basically the soul, spirit, life force, chi`, Ruach, etc. West however thinks that it is not a personal thing and can be transferred body to body. The new doctor at the prison happens to be the boy from early whose sister was killed and for some reason, rather than blaming West for killing his sister and hating him, he is fascinated by him and his work and wants to take Cain’s old place by West’s side. With the help of the doctor, Howard, West gets all the necessary components of his perfect re-agent that he had been working on since we first met him. The experiments go as well as they always have. Things get messy again when another love interest enters the picture, a reporter who is reporting on the prisons condition to let the public know how crappy it is. The Warden is a creeper in every sense of the word and when trying to rape her and manipulate her fails, he kills her and tells the guards it was the prisoner who he had already beaten almost to death (although there is no danger of him dying as he was already dead) who killed her. Howard, like Cain, in agony over his lost love lets West conduct his experiment and he ends up giving her the NPE from the Warden who west killed (I told you West is a hero) and tings get weird.
At first it does not seem like it is going to work but then she seems perfectly normal; however, since it was not her own NPE things get fucked-up. She doesn’t start acting like the warden per se…well she sort of does for a bit, but she more acts like a insane demon and now seems to suffer from DID (Disassociated Identity Disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder). The prisoners break out of their cells, West brings back the Warden because like I said he can’t help himself, and gives him a rats NPE and he does begin to act like a rat and mutate a bit but he still has his old personality. The reporter runs away from prisoners who want to rape her and when they catch her she turns into psycho-bitch and horribly kills them all, meanwhile the Warden is going around, after he stole the re-agent from West after knocking him out (sound a little like the first film?) reanimating all the dead prisoners because he takes his job seriously and wants order. There is a lot of crazy ogre and affects that seem like something out of Evil Dead and Evil Dead (version) II. In the end West escapes pretending to be Dr. Howard and Howard meanwhile is thought to be a prisoner because he killed the reporter after she begged him to before she went all demon again (more reference to Evil Dead) and he is put in an asylum. Now I do not really like this ending because it is kind of upsetting.
However, the movie over-all is not bad. It is fun, campy, has several very comedic moments, and is quite disturbing at times. In addition, the film is definitely watchable and so I cannot give it too bad of a rating. That is the problem when you have seen many shitty zombie movies, you want to be more generous to the not so good ones because at least they do not suck that bad. As a fun film though it is ok and so I give Beyond Re-Animator 2 ¾ out of 5 stars. Bear in mind that when I do reviews of movies that are not zombie themed, my ratings will be a lot more subjective and objective rather than generous and will run on a different scale than the zombie movies.
