We live in a time where expansions on the works of Stephen King take the form of things like Castle Rock, or Welcome To Derry, that take the various source materials to bold new places while never losing sight of what made the original stuff so special. However, regardless about what you feel about mixing of previous King characters into a narrative gumbo, or the continuing adventures of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, you can’t help but admit that its light years away from the kind of crap we used to get.
Obviously it would be easy to point a condemning finger at the ten various sequels and remakes that followed in the wake of Children Of The Corn, the infamous liberties taken with The Lawnmower Man and the fact that the follow ups to The Mangler didn’t even have a mangler in them, but I’ll never truly understand to this day why we got a third entry to the Sometimes They Come Back series. Especially when it seems that all the filmmakers really want to do is just to rip off The Thing…
Welcome to Antarctica, where the snow is plentiful, the temperatures are way below freezing and the U.S.military seems to have installed an illegal mining operation for suspiciously sinister reasons. I mean, it has to be sinister, right? Otherwise why would a member of the six person team suddenly go on a rampage leading to two military operatives being helicoptered out to try and return order to the remote camp?
After rappelling in thanks to a storm that stubbinly refuses to let their transport land, determined Major Callie O’Grady and the troubled Captain Sam Cage forge their way through the elements to reach the camp and discover two terrified survivors. The first is medical officer Captain Jennifer Wells, the second is weasly technical officer Lieutenant Brian Shebanski and after the usual, initial bout of gun pointing and yelling, the group finally get to work and figure out what has happened.
Of course, weird shit soon starts occurring such as the frozen stiff corpse of one of the team suddenly disappearing, O’Grady succumbing to gas in the mine after the level they’re on mysteriously changes and Cage swears he sees a shadowy figure running around outside in below freezing temperatures. With the discovery of an ancient book about conjuring the devil (in perfectly legible English, of course) and a map emblazoned with a pentangle pointing to their exact location, it soon becomes obvious that some otherworldly shit is going down and these random survivors are slap bang in the middle of it.
But when it’s revealed that the cause of all these demonic shenanigans is a member of the original group named Karl Schilling, Cage realises that his secret past has finally caught up with him and it’s time to finally pay the piper.
You see, this is what confuses me sometimes. If you’re an eager filmmaker working in low budget, DTV, horror movies throughout the 90s I perfectly understand why you’d want to emulate other (better) directors once you get an opportunity to craft an actual feature – but when you make it your film’s entire identity, there’s a very good chance you’ll ultimately shoot yourself in the foot. Let’s use Sometimes They Come Back… For More as an example (which makes sense considering I’m reviewing the bastard thing) because despite the fact that Daniel Zelik Berk’s threequel has two previous movies to draw from, he seemingly has no intention whatsoever to stick to the whatsoever when there’s other movies he can rip off. In case we’ve forgotten, the Sometimes… movies and the original King short story have previously concerned themselves with gangs of bullies who have made various deals with the devil to come back from the dead and take vengences on the goodie two shoes they enjoyed tormenting in life. The first – and only truly viable – entry adapted King’s story as a TV movie which saw mutilated greasers pick on Tim Matheson’s teacher, while the second film, at the very least, gave us an entertainingly deranged performance from the late Alexis Arquette.
However, …For More decides to jettison all that just so Berk can do his best to suck up to John Carpenter by simply coughing up a predictably inferior approximation by setting matters in the middle of the frozen, God forsaken wastelands of Antarctica. While this does initially seem like a half-decent idea to move the franchise away from small town America and undead bullies and deliver something fresh, the director’s idea to accomplish that by simply copying other movies ends up being as fresh as two week off milk. In fact, Berk can’t even stick solely to The Thing and, in an attempt to keep the demonic references making sense, instead turns to yet another Carpenter film, Prince Of Darkness, to keep those devil worshiping wheels turning as the dead soon rise and shuffle down icy corridors as satanic puppets while the villain hopes to open a handy backdoor for Satan to emerge.
Maybe all this might have ended up being somewhat cool(ish) if the director or the script had the first clue about what to do, but at no point do either of then realise that you actually make all the arguing and corridor wandering actually interesting if you want your audience to give a shit. However, seeing as out heroes arrive at the facility after everything’s gone to shit, it’s actually quite difficult to remember which of the characters are supposed to be where considering that we’ve only been introduced to less than half of them. Adding to the confusion is the fact that despite all the performances being pretty bad, some of the cast actually has some prior juice. Faith Ford may have garnered a bunch of Emmy nominations for her stint in Murphy Brown, but you wouldn’t fucking know it from seeing her in this and in addition to that, Chase Masterson was a familiar face in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
However, the true villain here isn’t Satan, but some truly flat writing that not only has two of the main characters profess their love for one another in the climax despite only meeting hours earlier, but drops a twist on us like a piano that involves the main character not only being the villain’s half brother, but also is seemingly immortal after some past deal him and his sibling made with Lucifer over 80 years ago. It’s supposed to be a shock, but you’re still so confused trying to work out who is who and wondering why there’s a satanic alter located four floors below the surface of Antarctica, that you’re more like “Huh? What?” rather than “oh my God!”.
Yet another massively unnecessary Stephen King franchise drives itself into the ground with the force of a fallen angel with a threequel that can’t even be bothered to keep the basic franchise thread going. But while it’s doing this, it also bungles ripping off not one, but two John Carpenter movies at no extra charge proving that the title could use a change in wording and punctuation. Sometimes They Come Back? No more.
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