Pet Sematary 2 (1992)

Every review I could find about this movie mentioned its over the top gore, and while I usually have the same policy towards gore as CGI (only use it when absolutely necessary) and thought I could just ignore it and make my review focus on the deeper meaning of the film, I find that the goriness of the film is all I can think about after watching this one. I absolutely loved the first Pet Sematary by Stephen King (as you can see in my review of the film at the link) but this one just isn't the same. Now that being said I still think the film is decent if you're a fan of the first because there are a lot of similarities: the evil pet, pretty much everyone dying, several references to the events of the first film, similar sets used, and of course a great Ramones song playing at the credits. The sheer amount of gore is the film's main weakness, but other weaknesses include its trying to hard to be a teen movie. There are all sorts of angsty "teens have problems" scenes, but in the grand scheme of the film they are totally irrelevant to rest of the events in the film, except that they help to emphasize that the main [teen] characters of the film are outcasts whose only true friends have died (the main boy's mom, and the fat boy's dog). This movie has an unlikely hodgepodge of B celebrities: Anthony Edwards (Goose from Top Gun), Edward Furlong (the boy from Terminator 2), Lisa Waltz (Brighton Beach Memoirs, Starry Night), Jared Rushton (Tom Hanks's friend from Big, Honey I Shrunk the Kids) and Clancy Brown (Shawshank Redemption, Highlander, and the voice of Mr. Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants). The movie also has some unexpected black humor in it, most of which comes from Clancy Brown's character (the dinner table scene, and the teen with motorcycle scene). As with the first movie when people or animals die the characters then bury them in the special Native American burial ground behind the Pet Cemetery and they come back to life, but usually 

with a murderous streak in them. Furlong's character is obviously messed up psychologically after the death of his mom at the beginning of the film, and he only continues to get more messed up as the film goes on and more people die. But at one point he becomes so messed up (as does his world around him) that this weird synergy is created and it's almost as if his misfit character has found a place he belongs (albeit among the dead/undead), and that is probably one of the best/weirdest and most unique moments of the film, because you don't really know what will happen next (except that he will resurrect his mother). The only other thing worth mentioning about this one is that it has one of the most realistic looking car wrecks I've ever seen in the movies, and I have no idea how they could have damaged the car the way they did without the people inside actually getting killed. And there's a crazy scene where a guy pops the eyes out of a 

taxidermied pug dog (who you think is alive at first).  Also I liked the dog in this movie. In my opinion the dog is much scarier than the cat from the first movie. I should also mention this movie is pretty hard to find at the moment, except if you have Xfinity on demand with Comcast it is currently available there. I give the film a 3.25/5, and you can view the trailer below:

Event Horizon (1997)

Event Horizon is essentially a haunted house movie in outer space. The spaceship is creepy, full of creepy noises, ghosts/hallucinations, and other blinking lights and other standard fare in haunted house movies. A lot of people either love or hate this movie, it was panned by most critics but it has a strong fan following. The film is set in the future and is about an innovative spaceship that went through a black hole and disappeared, only to reappear years later with its crew missing. A team of astronauts are sent to figure out what happened to the crew and salvage what they can from the ship, the ship's creator (Sam Neill's character) is 

among the salvage team. The new crew starts experiencing strange things on board the ship and they come to a dark conclusion on where the ship might have gone on its initial trip through the black hole (hell). The acting is what ties this movie together, both Sam Neill (Jurassic Park) and Laurence Fishburne (pre-Matrix) give wonderful performances, but the supporting cast although full of relatively unknown faces is also great featuring: Joely Richardson (Natasha Richardson's sister, and Vanessa Redgrave's daughter), Sean Pertwee (Equilibrium, and Dog Soldiers), and Jason Isaacs (The Patriot and Lucius Malfoy from the Harry Potter series). As the film progresses it gets progressively gory (they had to cut back in order to get an R rating). I absolutely love haunted house movies though and pretty much any twist on them, so this was interesting and enjoyable even if a tad too gory for my liking

at times. The pacing was wonderful, the film had a natural progression leading up to its climax at the very end of the film. The ending was similar to that of Carrie (1976), or Dressed to Kill (1980), or The Fury (1978). The CG is impressive by 1997 standards, but a bit dated by today's standards. It is also notable that the film has a similar feel to the first Alien (1979) film. I give it a 4.25/5; The film is featured in Rue Morgue Magazine's 200 Alternative Horror Films You Need to See. The film is also available to stream on Netflix. You can view the trailer below:  

The House by the Cemetery (1981)

I normally don't like films by Lucio Fulci, they are usually far too graphic and gory for me, and this film was no exception. Fulci's most famous film is 1979s Zombie: We're Going to Eat you! also known as "Zombi 2". Fulci's horror movies are famous for their gore (think Dario Argento's typical violence taken up a notch). Fulci also has some films famous for their Gothic imagery though, and this is one of those (the other one being The Beyond). I liked the cinematography as a whole, very similar to an Argento film, and I liked the fact that they actually filmed part/parts of this film on location in New York, because typically if foreign low budget independent movies are set in US cities, they film them in a different country and just try to get away

with it (Inferno[1980] for example). The sets and music were also really good. The adult actors were good, but the little boy annoyed me though ( they also dubbed his voice with a voice that did not seem to fit his age or looks). Plot wise I thought the story was very confusing, the boy's nanny seemed to have some sort of connection to the murders and such, but that was never really explained. The husband also had a secret and it's confusing if his secret was an affair, or something connected to the murders, not to mention the ending didn't really make much sense either (also similar to an Argento film that way). Plus I found the "monster"'s costume to be really fake, it didn't really have a face, it was horrible. And of course as I mentioned before it was far too gory for my taste, I'm talking Dead Alive (1992)[aka Braindead] levels of gore here. Too many limbs everywhere and too much bizarre mutilation, and when all that is shown, the camera sits on it for WAY too long in my opinion, a la David Cronenberg style. I give this one my lowest rating yet, a 2/5. I should also mention that like most of Dario Argento's films, and old Spaghetti Westerns, this film is dubbed in english, even though some actors and characters in it did speak english. This one is available to stream on Hulu.com, you can also view the trailer below: