While Mary Lambert’s “Pet Sematary” was nothing but a melodramatic exercise in tedium that put the actual center of the film in the background in favor of endless moaning and groaning about inept parents, her follow-up puts the sematary front and center. And still pretty much misses the point of it all. The 1992 follow-up is ugly, mean-spirited and still lacks any dread or menace to it. Not to mention there’s an immense focus on animal cruelty that’s often tough to sit through. In the end, it also fails to recognize the lure of the sematary and why these idiots continue bringing their loved ones to it to revive the dead. Once again the sematary is still there.
I wanted to love “Exit Humanity,” but in the end I feel like there were just too many ideas for one film. “Exit Humanity” attempts to take a simply a period piece zombie movie and turn it in to a high concept art house film. So there’s narration (by the great Brian Cox), there’s an alleged journal chronicling the rise of the dead, there are animated wipes that progress to the next scene, there are animated sequences where our hero fights the walking dead, and there are an endless stream of flashbacks and nightmare sequences allegedly symbolizing the carnage of the situation at hand.
Mill Creek delivers a dozen family friendly films for anyone looking to wile away a weekend on light G rated television movie fare, for a low price. “The Best Bad Thing” features George Takei about a young girl named Rinko who discovers the nature of her Japanese heritage during the depression. Never quite feeling American or Japanese enough, she learns about her culture and comes of age and her culture. “Bonjour Timothy” about a young boy named Timothy who is tasked with hosting a foreign exchange student named Michael.