Premise - A budding young doctor creates a serum that allows freshly deceased (and the not so freshly deceased) corpses be brought back to life. What I was hoping for with Re-Animator was something along the lines of The Evil Dead. And, it has to be said that it shares many facets with The Evil Dead, low production values, bad acting, ridiculous story, etc. However Re-Animator is not fit to kiss the feet of the mighty Evil Dead. Whilst the acting in The Evil Dead is bad, it is also bad with a wink to the camera. It's played up for effect. In Re-Animator the standard of acting is just plain bad. I like Jeffrey Combs, I'm a big Star Trek fan and his many parts in the various series have entertained me no end. I also like his part in The Frighteners, here he is just awful. His support is terrible, to an almost embarrassing degree. Especially bad is Barbra Crampton as the 'love' interest. Her sole purpose seems to be eye candy that gets groped by headless re-animated corpses (yes, you read that right!). Visually the film has nothing on The Evil Dead. Whilst it could be said that the effects are generally of a higher standard (just), they are shot in such a way that they are invective. They seem to be there for shock value more than anything. Kind of like, 'Look what we just did, isn't it gross?'. Director Stuart Gordon isn't half the autre that San Raimi is. Whilst in The Evil Dead Raimi shows a flair behind the camera that is way above his budget (and pulls it off). Gordon just seems to be going through the motions, there's no flair, no invention. It's generic horror direction by numbers. It's not all bad though, just mostly bad. The film is sporadically funny. Mostly due to the ludicrousness of what's happening more than anything else. The story has so many plot holes and inconsistencies that if you didn't laugh you would turn the damn thing off. For example, how can a decapitated head speak? It has no way to draw in air for speech. How does the brain work with no blood flow? Small things like this are littered all over the film. In short a poor schlock-horror film that in fairness might have benefited if I hadn't seen the mighty Evil Dead so recently.

4/10 for Re-Animator. Poster Quote - De-Animate please.