Time: 86 Minutes
Age Rating: R16 – Violence and sex scenes
Cast:
Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West
Bruce Abbott as Daniel Cain
Barbara Crampton as Megan Halsey
David Gale as Dr. Carl Hill
Robert Sampson as Dean Alan Halsey
Director: Stuart Gordon

I remember hearing about Re-Animator and marked that as a horror movie to get around to watching with how much I saw people talking about it. All I could glean from the title is that it probably involved bringing the dead to life, and from the images and premise, seemed to have some mad scientist element. Re-Animator turned out to be very wild and not quite what I was expecting.

Re-Animator is a fun ride, it’s quite captivating and entertaining throughout, and it certainly helps that it moves at quite a good pace. It is very darkly comic and campy, and those elements fit alongside the onscreen horror quite well. It is a very deranged film, and effectively escalates the insanity over the runtime, concluding with a bonkers finale.

For a silly low budget horror movie, the performances are great. One of the highlights of the film was the character of Herbert West, played wonderfully by Jeffrey Combs. As this interestingly weird, ruthless and mad scientist, Combs has such a manic screen presence that you can’t look away from. He is hilariously over the top and makes the movie even more fun to watch. Bruce Abbott and Barbara Crampton are really good at conveying their characters’ fear and vulnerability, and David Gale makes for a solid and theatrically over the top villain.

Stuart Gordon’s direction is strong, you can tell that the movie didn’t exactly have a large budget, but that was fitting with this movie especially with its effects and the atmosphere it created. The visuals are great and the practical effects are fantastic, with some top notch and creative body horror. Richard Band’s score compliments the horror on screen, even its similarities to Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho are very distracting.

Re-Animator is a really good, darkly comic and captivating horror movie with great visuals, solid performances, and fantastic and creative practical effects. I was surprised to learn that it became a film series, spawning two sequels. While I’m not sure that any of them will be as good as the original, I’m curious to check those out.