Beyond Reanimator (2003)

Dir: Brian Yuzna

Lacklustre threequel that fails to live up to its predecessors. Jeffrey Combs is back as Herbert West but this time he's in prison. The clink doc, Howard Phillips (GROAN), enlists West to help in the clinic but his ulterior motive is to produce more of West's "re-agent", the secret formula that brings back the dead. Before long, zombies abound and the traditionally splattery mayhem ensues. Unfortunately, there's something missing. Although we get everything from twitching, rat-bothering severed penises to eyeballs running around of their own volition, the "shock and awe" of the first film's insane gore is missing. Instead, the mix of comedy and brutality just jars and feels somehow gross (in the bad way) and yet very, very dull. The fact that they use endlessly convoluted pseudo-science to justify what's basically a retread of the first two films just makes it all the more tedious. The prosthetic work by Screaming Mad George is technically excellent and Elsa Pataky is always a pleasure but otherwise, there's not much here. *1/2