SPOILERS INCLUDED because this movie sucks. You've been warned.
There's two things going on with this flick which already give it a two strike count...
1) Apparently a second sequel to a TV movie adaptation of one of Stephen King's many short stories he cranked out, probably while drunker than Robin Williams on a tour of the Jack Daniels plant. I swear, there's some unwritten rule in Hollywood that says any adaptation of Stephen King story horror story must suck. Dudes in black trench coats come by to check the finished screenplay and make sure that the one or two bits of stupidity that creep in at the beginning snowball to full-blown, "You've just fucking given up, haven't you?" Either that or no one involved in the production of this movie gave a fuck. Coincidentally, those are also my two theories about why Stephen King hasn't written anything scary since Dilbert was funny.
2) While made in 1998, it seems to rip off two of John Carpenter's films (this and this) in spite of it being a sequel to a Stephen King story. It also proves John was a decent director back in the '80s, because it rips off everything except the scary bits, even with the added benefit of a decade plus of special effects technology development.
Plot starts off:
There's this remote "research" base that's a cover for an illegal mining operation fronted by the U.S. gov't. It's reported that some shootings have occurred.
Review:
Jesus H. Goddamn Fucking Christ on a crutch, where to begin...
Since this hugely illegal and profitable endeavour is threatened with takeover or exposure by unknown outside agents, the gov't sees fit to send a grand total of TWO, count 'em, TWO, MP/special forces/what-the-fuck-ever assault rifle-wielding types. By the end, you learn that one of these two is the dumbest, most slow-witted motherfucker alive (referred to hereafter as "dumb-ass"), who seems to have forgotten the past 99% of his life up to that point. You figure with all the shit he must know, he might've acted a shade more intelligently, or perhaps let somebody else in on the info. I choose to believe the screenwriter got lazy as fuck.
They encounter dead bodies on the way to the base, and leave them largely unexamined because, shit, they couldn't possibly have any evidence on them, right? No, just leave them unattended in the snow or convenient vacant base room. Dumb-ass starts seeing hallucinations and flashbacks of people, and you, the viewer, have no idea what the fuck is going on. Know how the Highlander always has flashbacks to his memories? Imagine the director trying that trick, but the audience doesn't know they're centuries old. Because if they just straight up made the plot point now, they'd have no excuse to make Dumb-ass act like a dumb-ass for another 75 minutes.
Anyhow, dead bodies start turning up missing. As in, "walked away on their own." One more goes missing. Then there's some sounds on the roof. "Must be a weather vane," says Dumb-ass. Turns out there's also a mole inside the base. His identity is hidden until the beginning of the third act by, I shit you not, his hat not falling out of place. Not once despite grenades going off, gunfire, and sprinting down corridors. Like it was fucking duct taped there the entire time until the writer said, "Damn, I need to reveal this character as evil, and I can't think of any way with less than sledgehammer-like subtlety. Nope, no two ways about it, I have to go back to the start and make him have a hat that never falls off until Dumb-ass accidentally knocks it off. I literally cannot think of any other way," he said, probably while tearing open another packet of cocaine and pouring it into his espresso. Before he's actually ferreted out, he willingly and of his own initiative uses electronics skills ONLY HE HAS to help them find the villain's inner lair, you know, where all the zombies come from. Why the fuck he did this instead of say, NOT doing it or sabotaging the operation is left to the imagination of the viewer, especially since he was the dude that (follow me for a sec here) initially smashes up the radio to prevent communication. He uses spare parts from the damaged radio to build the most durable RC camera robot this side of MacGyver in under an hour. That's some A-Team shit right there.
Also, Dumb-ass sees a certain character die. He is also piecing together (which shouldn't even be necessary) that the dead are coming back to life to fuck with the living. After he barricades himself inside a room with the other survivors, he hear his dead comrade's voice imploring him to open the door ... which he does. Dumb-ass.
Eventually, he chucks a grenade into a corridor that appears to be as stable as a prospecting mine from the 1850s. Amazingly the tunnel holds and the zombies vanish. Keep in mind, they're not gone permanently, just annoyed enough to go away for a bit ... from a grenade blast in a confined area. Keep that last bit in mind.
The two survivors eventually figure out they can kill the quite physical zombies by stabbing them in the heart. Wait, wtf? Blowing them to smithereens in a confined space is somehow less complete destruction than a single, awkward thrust with an antique 19th century harpoon?
Towards the end, all the secondary zombies, which apparently have the magical ability to vanish into thin air, disappear, and all that remains is the head demon-zombie dude (DZD) that turns out to be the (wait for it) son of Satan, and HALF-BROTHER of Dumb-ass. Not only that, Dumb-ass remembers his half-brother torturing people to death just for the hell of it since at least WWI and he mentions they've been doing this "murder, death, kill" thing for centuries, and Dumb-ass just now seems able to recall this, even though he found a WWI trinket in the first 15 minutes of the film that should've jogged his memory like a taser to the nads. He also found (my favourite "wtf" moment) a book with a title page written in English called Raising Demons (every other page in the book is written in weird, foreign script, but the title page is stylized English font).
Anyhoo, DZD, who's displayed powers of: super strength, raising the dead, teleportation, intangibility, and various other black magic shit, announces he has a deadline to meet and needs one more murder before he can become a demi-god. Said deadline is within the hour, if not minutes. You'd think that'd be motivation to get your ass moving slightly faster than an arthritic sloth with a heroin problem and unleash all of hell's dark wrath to get that shit in gear. DZD doesn't think so and tries to persuade the reluctant Dumb-ass to do it for him, because the family that kills together stays together, or something.
DZD does the equivalent of a magical self-destruct, I guess, causing Dumb-ass to physically escape a quaking mineshaft (he's the son of Satan, too, but didn't get all the kick-ass abilities his brother has, for some odd reason). Dumb-ass eventually takes out DZD with a swinging pick-axe to the heart. Keep in mind that Dumb-ass couldn't stab the heart of a wounded man lying prone, face up on the ground in front of him with fewer than three tries about a couple scenes ago.
In closing, I've learned that pick-axe beats antique harpoon, both of which beat grenade and automatic weapons.
Sometimes They Come Back ... for More - At 'Dem Flicks with Malcolm
You should do movie reviews for the New York Times.
That's not a joke or sarcasm.
That's not a joke or sarcasm.
“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” - Dr Thomas Sowell
This movie is like the poster boy for what could've been good, but just got nothing right. The only cast member anyone might recognize is one of the MPs, who's the roulette-type wheel spinning chick from that one shitty Star Trek series starring that dude from Spenser for Hire.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."