Manchmal kommen sie wieder 2

Sometimes They Come Back...Again (1996)

* (out of 4)

A man (Michael Gross) returns to his hometown with his daughter (Hilary Swank) after the death of his mother. Once there he sees a teenager who looks like the same man who murdered his sister thirty-years earlier and now he's after the daughter. SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK...AGAIN is a pretty poorly produced sequel that ended up going direct-to-video and it's easy seeing why. What the producers have basically done is take the original Stephen King story and just use the basic concept of it and then add some new stuff of their own. This new stuff includes the teenage killer being a Satanist and this here leads to all sorts of stuff dealing with a cult and their needing to scarifies the daughter. I don't mind when someone adds something but if you're going to do it then you really need to improve the original idea or at least do something interesting. That doesn't happen here and we're basically left with a cheap version of the original film with a few more horror elements thrown in. I'm really not sure what the point of adding the horror elements were as everything is fairly tame, the deaths unmemorable and the special effects are at times laughable. Even worse is the voice alteration that they gave the main bad guy. I'm not sure if someone thought this was scary but it was more laughable than anything else. I've always liked Gross but he's pretty forgettable and way too boring here. It was somewhat fun seeing future Oscar-winner Swank here and especially in a rather weird sex scene. The rest of the supporting cast range from decent to boring. In the end, this sequel is clearly just a cheap excuse to try and milk some money from a fairly popular film.

SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK should not be compared to the original, which really has nothing to do with this except for the mention of a name. There is horror in this film because the evil ones are cruel, efficient and powerful. It is true horror. My only criticism is a valid one, I believe. The main evil character looks too much like Jerry Seinfeld to scare me, although he is so evil a character you may forget that for an instant. There is enough here to really scare you on a dark night. Try it.

This movie was like watching a presentation in a community college class on movie effects. I was watching it and got the notion that I could write a better movie, so I did. It took about 14 minutes. I kept feeling like they were deciding on exactly what to do as the scenes came up. No planning at all. The death scenes were laughable. The acting was too. This movie should have been called, If Nothing Else Is On, Watch This Muted Because Hillary Swank Is In It. That's basically what we did, minus the muted part. I would recommend, if you enjoy this movie, that you see a doctor immediately. There is a good chance that something serious is wrong with your head. Who knows, maybe there is a tarot card stuck in it.

That's right! It's WORSE than the original! Interesting characters? Suuuuuuuure, uh-huh, have fun in that padded room of yours. The plot, characters, etc. all could've been pulled out of the Big Hollywood Grab Bag-O-Cliches, and probably were. Think about it: The wonderful good girl, the slutty but friendly girl, the extremely sweet at first but turns-out-to-be-evil guy, the weird psychic girl. Real original, you can only find THAT in about 436 other movies. It wore out the already-tired original one, plus screwed it up even more with the stupid (and you can't say this isn't the King of Cliches, or at least some royalty) occult theme. Done in a very cheezy way, also. (Personally, though, I did find it quite funny with--that thing about the ears. But that only lasted a second, so it's not much in the way of redeeming value.)

...that pays lip service to the original movie...which in turn was a somewhat weak adaptation of the original King short story. As such, the focus is on the gore rather than the peripheral back-plot of why the ghost/demons are stalking the protagonist. It's a merely adequate horror movie, but don't go into it looking for a glimmer of the Master's work.