Pet Semetary II (1992)

"You bury your own."

This film is supposed to be awful. It is, or so I e found, perfectly adequate as a serviceable sequel to a quite good film which deals well with the fact that no actors recur from the first film by simply depicting further shenanigans with that Native American cemetery. It’s a perfectly ok film, and an interesting early starring role for an immediately post-Terminator 2: Judgement Day Edward Furlong.

If that sounds like faint praise then it sort of is, but the film is genuinely adequate rather than bad. I liked the bait and switch film-within-a-film opening, and the plot works well at least until the point where people start being resurrected, where things go a bit mad and we end up with a full three resurrected people. Still, it’s an entertaining watch, with Gus the sheriff being an entertaining cartoon baddie in a solid performance by character actor Clancy Brown, a familiar face from so many character roles.

It’s solid, but not really scary. There’s a nice little electrocution scene at the start (“Oh yummy, beef jerky” said Mrs Llamastrangler. She’s a somewhat twisted individual, but that’s why I married her.) but not much else in the way of set pieces, and perhaps a lot of that is down to the solid, competent but unexceptional directorial style. It’s a film that neither sparkles nor stinks, the epitome of averageness.