Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

(French, On Cable TV, January 2021) While I watch a lot of horror movies (I’d wager that in a given year, I see more horror movies than the total number of movies watched by casual cinephiles!), I’m not entirely eager to call myself a fan of the genre: Putting aside the formulaic and nihilistic nature of most horror films, much of the genre seems to attract a strange blend of fans—having attended a number of World Horror Conventions in my fannish heydays, I’m familiar with the gore-loving rough black comedic attitude of many aficionados, and I’m not nearly as attracted to that than by the thematic possibilities of the genre once it moves beyond just being about the monsters it portrays. But if you’re familiar with that tone, there are a bunch of horror movies out there that seek membership in a very specific semi-comic genre—not quite soul-suckingly bleak as other horror films, clearly more playful than straight-up monster slashers, and specifically talking to like-minded fans. This unforgivably meandering introduction is meant to place Beyond Re-Animator in its proper place—as a semi-comic, semi-gory, semi-ironic paean to the genre itself, riffing off the strengths of its previous instalments (mostly Reanimator—there’s not much here reminiscent of Bride of Re-Animator) in order to deliver more of the same. The plot has to do with a young doctor seeking the tutelage of Dr. Herbert West, now imprisoned after the events of the previous films. Thanks to new plotting devices, West is now able to reanimate dead bodies more efficiently, and the film plays out in a prison where death is frequent but not permanent. Beyond Re-Animator integrates lovingly crafted gory practical effects with a dollop of CGI to expand the cinematography of its predecessors, but otherwise doesn’t improve much on them. The humour is muted compared to the first instalment, and while the plot is slightly more interesting than Bride of Re-Animator, it doesn’t fly all that much higher. Still, the point here is for horror filmmakers like Brian Yuzna to deliver what horror filmgoers expect—Jeffrey Combs is easily the film’s main draw as the deranged Dr. West. Overall, though, it’s a somewhat average entry in its subgenre—a treat if you’re tracking down the Re-Animator films, but not something that will convert you to the subgenre if you happen to stumble on it without sympathy for what it’s trying to do. That’s fine—fannish audiences grow through stellar examples of the genre, but are sustained by average entries until the next big hit.