“Re-Animator” (1985)

Re-Animator

Grade: A-

Cliché yet clever; fucked up and funny; gross but good-looking — Re-Animator successfully (and surprisingly) mixes lowbrow and highbrow art to create a horror film that is smarter than it looks and better than you think. A few more notes on Re-Animator:

Directing:

First-time director Stuart Gordon keeps the story moving at a fast pace, never adds unnecessary scenes and captures the extreme gore with a show-don’t-tell style that keeps us scared-yet-intrigued, satisfying fans of cheap thrills and surreal sci-fi alike. It’s easily the best film of his career.

Acting:

Jeffrey Combs is brilliantly deadpan as mad scientist Herbert West, a character who is so hilariously deranged that we can’t help but love him. He’s by far the film’s most memorable creation, even though other B-listers like Bruce Abbott and David Gale make fine contributions as well. And even the re-animated undead, who are walled behind a mask of impressive practical effects, are very believable zombies.

Writing:

At a tight 86 minutes, Re-Animator wastes no time. The action moves quick right from the get-go, with an unexpected amount of wittiness and subtle humor baked into every scene, and the film keeps up the entertaining energy for its duration. Even though it’s an adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft short story, Re-Animator’s main inspiration stems from the surrealism and non-sequiturs of Luis Buñuel. It hits us in a subconscious zone where horrors and laughs are strangely merged as one.

Music:

The cheesy orchestral score by Richard Band is admittedly influenced by Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho. Then again, due to the cleverness of the rest of the film, I’ll give Band’s blatancy the benefit of the doubt. If anything, the sounds-like-a-B-movie soundtrack is another sarcastic stroke of brilliance.

Ending (SPOILERS):

So, yes, the storyline ultimately becomes the dumb midnight movie that it is. And, sure, the rape scene is more misogynistic than most (punctuated by the nightmarish pseudo-kink of a “head giving head”). All this means Re-Animator is a horror movie first, art movie second, with no grand meaning or purpose other than to thrill. Case in point: main character Dan chooses to revive his girlfriend Megan as the end credits roll, showcasing that he’s learned nothing from his science experiments, while also setting up a sequel in the meantime. Because most of the movie’s entertainment had been quite intellectual, the very physical ending is somewhat disappointing.

“I didn’t kill him. I gave him life.” – Herbert West

Why Re-Animator gets an A-:

Even though the film eventually falls to the baked-in trappings of its gore-fest premise, Re-Animator remains rewatchable by being one of the funniest movies of the 1980s. I view it as a comedy rather than a sci-fi horror, which is why the ending ultimately leaves me unmoved.

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