All Dogs Go To Heaven (unless buried in a sequel)

What a strange, strange decision Mary Lambert made in following up her flawed but unnerving 1991 hit Pet Sematary with a pseudo horror comedy sequel no one wanted. But what a smart, smart decision she made in casting Clancy Brown.

Quick Plot: Jeff is an average teenager not destined to save the world (but played by a T2 era Edward Furlong) with a famous actress mom and estranged veterinarian dad played by everybody’s second favorite nerd, Anthony Edwards.

Look, I love the guy too, but all the medical knowledge in the world won’t make him more beloved to me than Rick Moranis.

Anyway, Mom dies in a freak on-set electrocution accident, sending son and pops to move back to her hometown Ludlow, the same New England hamlet where Gage Creed went No Fair on his family after being buried in Native American spiritual grounds.

Before you can remember the second verse to How Much Is That Doggy In the Window, Jeff finds himself on the same haunted soil, but this being something of a Stephen King knockoff, bullies are thrown in for extra measure. Tom Hanks' best friend from Big plays a mullety brat who lures Jeff into the Pet Sematary, but it’s the chubby Drew who tells him about its sordid history.

Did I mention Drew has a dog? Okay, he does and you know what shall become of it, but what I neglected to say is that it’s by the hands of the one, the only, the most underrated character actor in modern history, Clancy Brown.

Eff. Yeah.

Brown plays Gus, the town sheriff and jerky stepdad to Drew. For no reason other than Clancy Brown Is Awesome, he’s also the only character in the film with a New England accent. It’s a beautiful sound and were Mr. Brown to start his own phone sex company, I have no shame admitting that I’d fast be broke.

But back to Mary Lambert’s oddly toned story, one that eventually decides that the horror doesn’t seem to be hopping so hey! Let’s make you laugh. 

Or maybe that was just Clancy Brown’s decision.

Let me tell you something folks: if there’s one thing better than Clancy Brown hamming it up with a New England accent in a mid-90s horror sequel, it’s (minor spoiler) Zombie Clancy Brown hamming it up with a New England accent in a mid-90s horror sequel. As he slaughters rabbits, chews with his mouth open, and forces himself upon his wife (okay, that’s not awesome), Brown raises Pet Sematary 2 up a notch into something weirdly almost wonderful. 

Almost. Because even though there are children being gorily murdered by semis and mopeds in a somewhat light-hearted matter, there’s also fuzzy special effects and Skinemaxy blue-hued sex scenes...where Anthony Edwards gets mounted by his naked housekeeper with a wolf head. 

Hm.

It’s weird, plain and simple. Lambert probably would have been wiser to establish the horror-comedy vibe from scene 1. Instead, we’re stuck with poorly executed scares that rather suddenly turn into laughs at the 40 minute mark. It’s not the best way to make a movie.

High Points

Brown, Clancy

Low Points

Oh, I don’t know, the fact that the movie doesn’t come close to being scary but never commits to its own comedy?

Lessons Learned

Bringing a cat into the classroom on your first day at a new school? Not too smart

Working in LA as a veternarian might harden a man in the kind of way that leads to him keeping handgun handily sitting on top of his nightstand 

A great way to leave your audience deciding they’ve just watched a comedy: end on a fuzzy floating head portrait montage of all the characters killed in the film. Guaranteed laughmaker 

Confession Time

As much as I blast the original Pet Sematary and to a lesser extent, this one for having its characters make the ridiculous choice to bury their loved ones in evil ground after it has already proven itself, you know, eeeeeee-viiiiiiiiiiil, I would, without hesitation, reserve a double plot for Mookie and Joplin in a heartbeat if there was a Ludlow Pet Sematary in my neighborhood. Sure, they may come back and kill me, but you know...cute zombie cats!

Rent/Bury/Buy

Pet Sematary 2 isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation (or lack thereof) would have you believe. There’s something oddly admirable about Lambert’s decision to re-tackle Pet Sematary with a completely different and almost original take on the same basic story. It’s almost a shame that the end result is such a halfhearted mess, an inconsistently toned tale that only feels to find its footing when Clancy Brown is onscreen. The movie is streaming on Netflix and is certainly worth a gander for the curious or Clancy Brown fan (of which I assume is 100% of the human population) so give it a casual watch if you’re in the mood for a failed mid-90s horror experiement. It's...different.

Sometimes They Come Back...Wrong

I imagine few tragedies in life can ever come close to losing one’s child. It’s devastation on the most primal level of humanity, and a concept that has, not surprisingly, yielded some of cinema’s most touching, tragic, and haunting films to date.

The premise of Wake Wood, one of the newly restored Hammer Studios' releases, seems poised for inevitable sadness. Stop me if I’m wrong.

Quick Plot: Grieving parents Patrick (The Wire and Blackout’s Aiden Gillen) and Louise (The Children’s Eva Birthistle) move to the quaint rural town of Wake Wood after the their daughter Alice is mauled by a German Shepherd. When a citizen is accidentally killed by a lamb (go with it), town mayor Arthur (a refreshingly understated Timothy Spall) offers the couple something very special, a gift only Wake Wood can give.

There’s magic in the town see, dark, scary, but incredibly cathartic magic open to a select few. Arthur can resurrect Alice for a period of three days, after which she’ll again be gone forever and Patrick and Louise must then remain in town for the rest of their lives. This being a horror film, we know that a) Patrick and Louise will take the offer and b) something...won’t...turn...out...right.

At this point, you’re probably having intense flashbacks to Fred Gwynne’s ankle slicing in Pet Sematary. Wake Wood is indeed in that canon of sad parent horror, and has a similar feel. Once Alice is back, the film toys with sweet happiness before slowwwwwwwwly revealing something amiss. 

I’m delving into mild spoiler territory here. While I won’t give away the ending, I do want to discuss a very specific turn Wake Wood takes at the halfway point. If you plan on seeing the film--and I do recommend a rental--then you may want to exit at this point. I won’t be hurt.

Much.

Once we learn that Alice didn’t come back as planned, Wake Wood becomes, more ore less, another darned kids horror flick. Now as anyone familiar with my adoration for Bloody Birthday and Who Can Kill a Child? knows, I do enjoy that subgenre with the same enthusiasm I generally have for nachos or mint chocolate chip ice cream. With that in mind, shouldn’t the sight of a yellow slicker wearing seven year old punching people through the stomach have made me squeal in joy?

Well sure, if that’s all I thought the film needed. But Wake Wood sets itself up as something so much deeper. When you have a whole town chasing a little girl with torches, it’s something of a disappointment.

High Points

The opening five or so minutes do an excellent job of establishing Louise and Patrick's tragedy and subsequent move with the perfect level of show and tell

I’m not normally prone to jump scares, but there were at least two such moments in Wake Wood that did indeed make me gasp, certainly a sign of effectively developed tension

Low Points

The idea of an entire town having experienced these kinds of resurrections is quite haunting, and when we get those glimpses, incredibly powerful. Though Wake Wood is essentially the story of Patrick and Louise, it feels like there could have been a little more exploring of how such an ability would affect--both positively and negatively--a whole community

SPOILER ALERT

The final beat of Wake Wood has a menacingly mean black humor ring. I actually found it horrid. The film has brought us to a sad, but finished place, one where Louise is happy in the afterlife with Alice as she waits for a new child to be born in death. For our last shot to be a threatening layout of C-section items and a straight-at-the-camera wink from Patrick feels shocking for the sake of shocking and ultimately, a punch in the pregnant belly of characters we’ve come to truly care for.

THUS ENDETH SPOILERS


Lessons Learned

Always dress your child in bright colors, particularly if you’re going to be chasing her around in the dark woods for the bulk of your story and a shimmery yellow raincoat improves visibility tenfold

Stray Observation

In the three things I’ve thus far see actor Aiden Gillen in, the man always seems to get explicit sex scenes. Just pointing that out.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Wake Wood is a chilling film, one with a fantastically sad premise and some extreme tension. Personally, I was let down because it just feels as though the material was denser than what it produced, but it still manages to be a worthy rental. The DVD includes a batch of deleted scenes and nothing else, a disappointment as this film screams for more discussion from its creators. 

D'oh! So That's Why I'm Dead

Devoted horror fans put up with a lot. Bad acting and clunky dialogue are often standard, while roving misogyny and special effects made during arts ‘n’ crafts class are not uncommon. Worse of all, we find ourselves constantly defending a genre littered with characters that make Jessica Simpson look like a Rhodes Scholar.

Sadly even good horror films are not immune. Let’s look at a few examples where seemingly smart characters doom themselves with stupid decisions. 

Mapping The Blair Witch Project

From the plain-faced actors to the music-less sounds of autumn, The Blair Witch Project achieved a sense of realism so true, gullible fans formed vigilant search missions to save the ill-fated (and fictional) filmmaker trio. For all its clever plotting and subtle scenes, however, there is one glaring plot flaw that could make even the most loyal fan say, “At least Book of Shadows didn’t do that.

"I kicked the map into the river!"proclaims the giggling, near hysteric Mike. It’s certainly understandable that being lost in the woods and low on food would play with our characters’ heads here and there, but could it also transform a once smart man into a total idiot? Granted, the map would probably have served no other purpose than becoming a sharp paper airplane to jab into Heather’s eye, but still: making a character that careless cuts our sympathies by a granola bar portion.

The Beyond Stupidity

It’s easy to watch a zombie film these days with a sense of superiority. After experiencing hundreds encounters with shamblers, sprinters, talkers, and every other varietal, most discerning fans know the only way to survive a meeting with an undead warrior is to shoot him or her in the head. Of course, in 1981, this wasn’t quite universal knowledge and thus, David Warbek’s heroic doctor in Lucio Fulci’s surreal classic is somewhat excused for firing a few stray rounds. For an untrained marksman, the head is not always the most obvious target.

Of course, all that should change when, after shooting a bunch of rotting corpses to no effect in the stomach, a head shot finally takes one down. Most people--especially those with enough intelligence to pass medical school--would probably reason that repeating said shot could defeat the approaching monsters. This guy? Not so much. Then again, he does load his rifle by dropping bullets down the barrel, so maybe he just knows something we don’t.

Taking Advantage of The Ruins

Stranded on an abandoned temple, surrounded by gun-wielding natives, and running out of food and water, the five pretty young people of 2008’s surprisingly good little horror film have little hope for survival. Well, they do have one weapon but despite the fair amount of intelligence present in these young college educated characters, no one thinks to take advantage of the one piece of leverage they have against their human antagonists: the villainous plants. 

When Jenna Malone breaks down, she hurls a loose piece of greenery straight at her captors. It brushes a young boy and before you can say poison ivy, another local soldier instantly shoots the unlucky fellow. Logic would follow that tossing a few more flowers in their direction could buy a little time by inciting a shootout, perhaps providing enough chaos for a frantic escape. I guess our party girls and boys slept through Logic and Survival Skills 101 freshman year.

That Darned Pet Sematary

Mary Lamber’s 1989 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel has produced its share of nightmares (in mine, Gage and Chucky would teamed up against me as the world’s scariest duo with a combined height under four feet) but in order to truly  be frightened, the audience is forced to endure not one but three character decisions that defy basic logic.

The kindly retired Hermann Munster/author of wonderful children’s books Fred Gwynne plays a weathered old man who knows his home town well. Upon the death of the new neighbors’ beloved kitty, Gwynne’s Jud encourages Mr. Creed to bury it in the local pet graveyard, knowing full well that what goes into the ground will come up...different. And never good.

Not surprisingly, the feline Church returns with an extremely unreasonable dose of cattitude. You’d think the young father had learned his lesson, but then true tragedy strikes, killing his young son. Naturally, the best idea seems to be a post-mortem move back into the old neighborhood. This not-so-bright decision can certainly be excused when taking into account the grief of losing a child, so I’ll cut the grieving father some slack. However, upon being widowed (whaddya know, by the very monster he helped to create), Mr. Creed returns again to the clearly cursed pet cemetery to bury his late wife. Because surely three times is the charm.

Really? Sure, your daughter is conveniently stashed away at Grandma’s, but if you think this move is going to inspire a second honeymoon, prepare for some serious disappointment.

Dumbness in Dawn of the Dead ’04

I spent several years working in the pet care industry and have owned dogs and cats my whole life. I know how deeply love can run with the canine species. 

I’m also not an idiot.

According to Zack Snyder and James Gunn’s revision of the zombie rules, freshly spry corpses run faster than Ricky Henderson in his prime. They’re also pickier eaters than the average supermodel, preferring an Atkins friendly menu of human meat with no cheats allowed on puppy ribs. Hence, when border collie Chips is dispatched to bring a few sandwiches to the sharpshooting Andy, he doesn’t need protection. 

Tell that to the whiny redhead who puts several lives in danger attempting to rescue the completely safe dog.

So am I being too hard on these intellectually inferior (and massively unlucky) characters, or should they all invest in a few good books? And which other casts would you nominate for Darwin Awards and certain death?