Directed by Mary Lambert
Starring Edward Furlong, Anthony Edwards, Clancy Brown, Jared Rushton, Darlanne Fluegel and Jason MCGuire
Before I get started teeing off on the movie in question today, I just have to point that there actually was a point in time when I liked this movie. Back in the fall of 1993 when HBO was playing this on constant repeat, I used to really dig Pet Sematary Two for a lot of the same reasons that I liked Watchers. Seeing a horror flick with primarily young protagonists was a rarity, and I ate it up. It wasn't until much later that I realized that this flick is a big, steaming pile of crap, but I enjoyed the hell out of it while I could.
That's a shame, really, because this movie had a lot going for it on paper. A sequel to one of the most popular Stephen King adaptations, the same director as the first film, and a cast who, while they might not have been household names, were definitely a big step up from the "whoever we found passing out movie tickets that day" variety that slasher flicks largely have to get their flesh puppets from. And it had Eddie Furlong. Much like Corey Haim in Watchers, that was what really drew me to the movie, since the kid star of the single greatest action movie of all time (and I still believe this holds true today) Terminator 2 was the protagonist. As a kid, this guy was my anti-Macaulay Culkin. Given better material, he could have made this movie aces. Unfortunately, we've got some pretty shitty material.
The flick starts with tragedy, as Jeff Matthews (Furlong) watches his mother - a famous actress - die in an on-set accident. Soon afterwards, he and his father Chase (Anthony Edwards, who still doesn't have his damn dog tags) move to Ludlow, Maine. This is one aspect of the movie that I've always been a little mystified by - how a Hollywood actress would be married to a relatively small-time veterinarian. Generally, they prefer to stick to their own kind, for better or worse. At any rate, Furlong is indeed pretty dam ngood in this movie as Jeff; he's rough around the edges after the death of his mother, and manages to pull it off without seeming overtly emo. Edwards, on the other hand, is completely milquetoast and seems to be phoning it in more often than not. Maybe it was the food they had in catering, I don't know.
It doesn't take long for the burial ground to get utilized in this movie. This is where the movie really lost me, and I suspect that it is this way for many other viewers, as well. The first flick was a textbook study in the slow burn. This, not so much. Within short order, Jeff's buddy Drew (Jason McGuire) buries his dead dog. A short time AFTER THAT (/redundancy), Jeff's wicked town Sherriff stepdad (played by Clancy Brown, who will go down in history as one of the best dislikable pricks in cinematic history for his various villain roles) goes in the ground, and this is where the movie really flies off the rails as we get this really bizarre sequence where the dude initially acts uncharacteristically nice toward his family only to pull the swerve on us and go on a rampage.
Brown, as always, is more than game for this role and does his part, but it's here where this movie's VAST difference in tone from the original film really becomes apparent. The first was all about internal terror, for the most part, with the struggle that Louis Creed goes through after the death of his son being the driving force behind it. I remember being at a loss even as a 10-year-old just why Drew would resurrect his hulking mad dictator of a father. Call it a matter of script convenience. While all of this is going on, there's also some weird stuff as Jeff and Chase do some tests on the resurrected dog, and for the better part of five minutes this movie becomes Revenge of the Creature as we get all sorts of science-y exposition about how something can be medically dead but still functioning.
Anyway, this movie is essentially all one big stall until the finale, where Jeff brings back his dead mother. Did I need to spoiler tag that? I don't think it's necessary; it's what the whole movie is cruxed on, and the screenwriter was wise to deliver. I'll leave it up to you to absorb the movie's closing chapters (where one of the school bullies who has accosted Jeff throughout the film makes his sudden reappearance). They're not underwhelming, but they're not balls-to-the-wall awesome, either.
So it goes with Pet Sematary Two, a middling, disappointing sequel to one of the downright creepiest films of all time. It's shockingly cookie cutter, and the fact that a movie fitting this description came after a movie that gave us Zelda screaming "you'll never get out of bed" makes it even more depressing. In addition to that, the characters aren't terribly likable; we don't have the same sense of gut-wrenching loss from Jeff and his father that we did from Louis Creed. And while Clancy Brown is a game villain, he ventures into the realm of cartoony at times. Kind of like a big-screen version of Damien Sandow's current gimmick.
* 1/2 out of ****. I give it a BIT more credit than some people on the interwebz do, but I concur with the consensus that this one is a skip.
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