Harefooted Halloween: Pet Sematary II

What I Liked: It’s all about Clancy Brown’s (Extreme Prejudice, Blue Steel) demented performance.  He plays a cop/step-father who gets brought back from the dead except he’s all psychotic now.  The funny thing is he sorta pretends to be normal, or at least does semi-normal stuff and it takes forever for anyone to catch on.  Like he farms rabbits on the side and when he becomes zombified he kills a whole bunch, cooks them up and proceeds to stuff wads of food in his mouth and laugh about it with these dead eyes.  That scene alone is worth the price of admission.  Jeez…

The story gets exponentially crazier as it goes but it still manages to sneak up on you.  Before you know it you’re knee deep in zany shit.  For example, after Edward Furlong (T2, Detroit Rock City) witnesses how horribly wrong reanimating a dead dog and a dead Clancy Brown turns out he still decides the best thing to do is resurrect his deceased mother.  Also, Anthony Edwards (Zodiac, Miracle Mile) dreams he has sex with his late wife except she has a rabid dog’s head that wants to bite his arm off.  Man I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that dream.

The rockin’ soundtrack is fuckin’ rad with The Ramones returning to once again contribute a song.  While “Poison Heart” isn’t as good as “Pet Sematary” and wasn’t written specifically for the movie it’s still a pretty cool tune.

What I Didn’t Like: The story involving yet another group of people who bring once living things back to life is silly as shit.  The whole town seems to know about the magical Indian burial ground but they feel it’s just something they have to live with.  Sometimes people are gonna want to mess around with the laws of nature and hey, what can you do?

The acting is pretty terrible all around except for Brown how hams it up so much I can’t deny it brought me a good amount of joy.  He does the same weird, and I guess exaggerated (?), Maine accent that Fred Gwynne did in the original and it comes off laughably bad.

Overall Impressions: Interestingly I don’t think you need to have seen the first film to understand this one.  It works on its own because there aren’t any of the same characters and it’s a brand new plot line.  Well, new-ish.  The same shit happens where you progress from a dead animal to a dead human and they’re all fucked up and a bunch of folks get murdered as a result.  But the existence of an Indian burial ground and the process needed to revive a departed creature is explained all over again.

An unusual aspect is that there are two main stories happening at once and both are given equal attention.  There’s the Ed Furlong/Anthony Edwards dead mother/wife plot and the Clancy Brown is an awful person plot.  If this were more traditional the Clancy one would take a backseat but I wonder if the filmmakers liked the madcap acting so much that they gave him more screen time.  In any case the dual story idea actually works and keeps things moving along.

By the time it’s over we’ve gone on some kinda journey and we’re watching all the victims of the film inexplicably flash across the screen for one last awkward goodbye.  Seriously, who puts a little compilation clip of the dead characters at the end of a horror picture, or any picture for that matter?  if it was a true story, maybe.  But otherwise, what the hell?

Boy I’d really like to recommend this based on the bizarre creepy fun factor, but I know that’s slightly unethical.  It’s not a good movie exactly.  However, with the right group of people (you know, the type who enjoy watching someone take a power drill to a guy’s open shoulder wound) then there’s a good time in here.