Les enfants du diable

SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK should not be compared to the original, which really has nothing to do with this except for the mention of a name. There is horror in this film because the evil ones are cruel, efficient and powerful. It is true horror. My only criticism is a valid one, I believe. The main evil character looks too much like Jerry Seinfeld to scare me, although he is so evil a character you may forget that for an instant. There is enough here to really scare you on a dark night. Try it.

Sometimes They Come Back...Again (1996)

* (out of 4)

A man (Michael Gross) returns to his hometown with his daughter (Hilary Swank) after the death of his mother. Once there he sees a teenager who looks like the same man who murdered his sister thirty-years earlier and now he's after the daughter. SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK...AGAIN is a pretty poorly produced sequel that ended up going direct-to-video and it's easy seeing why. What the producers have basically done is take the original Stephen King story and just use the basic concept of it and then add some new stuff of their own. This new stuff includes the teenage killer being a Satanist and this here leads to all sorts of stuff dealing with a cult and their needing to scarifies the daughter. I don't mind when someone adds something but if you're going to do it then you really need to improve the original idea or at least do something interesting. That doesn't happen here and we're basically left with a cheap version of the original film with a few more horror elements thrown in. I'm really not sure what the point of adding the horror elements were as everything is fairly tame, the deaths unmemorable and the special effects are at times laughable. Even worse is the voice alteration that they gave the main bad guy. I'm not sure if someone thought this was scary but it was more laughable than anything else. I've always liked Gross but he's pretty forgettable and way too boring here. It was somewhat fun seeing future Oscar-winner Swank here and especially in a rather weird sex scene. The rest of the supporting cast range from decent to boring. In the end, this sequel is clearly just a cheap excuse to try and milk some money from a fairly popular film.

Sometimes They Come Back...Again is better than the original in some parts, but it is also worse. The flashbacks that appear throughout the movie are interesting and leak out information about the main character's past bit by bit. There are some good characters. My two favorites are the main villain, Tony (Alexis Arquette) who is very creepy, and Father Archer Roberts, a mysterious priest who the main character seeks help from. (Father Roberts is played by William Morgan Sheppard, who also had a similar role in Zork Nemesis, a cinematic computer game that also has a very somber, creepy mood. Check it out) The story is similar to the first movie, Jon Porter (Michael Gross) moves back to his hometown with his daughter after his mother dies. When he gets back, three demons from his past come back to terrorize him and his daughter. I smiled when several references were made to the original movie. Stephen King had put a demon raising ritual, in which you must cut off a finger, in his short story and it didn't make it for the first film, but this part of the story ...came back.. for the sequel. With all that the movie had a great, creepy mood to it, but unfortunately it begins to feel like a slasher movie, with a few characters dying miserably. That's the only element of this movie I don't like. Two characters died horribly on-screen, crying and screaming. In my opinion, that was a little inapropriate but, oh well. This movie is still good for any fan of the original movie.

This movie was like watching a presentation in a community college class on movie effects. I was watching it and got the notion that I could write a better movie, so I did. It took about 14 minutes. I kept feeling like they were deciding on exactly what to do as the scenes came up. No planning at all. The death scenes were laughable. The acting was too. This movie should have been called, If Nothing Else Is On, Watch This Muted Because Hillary Swank Is In It. That's basically what we did, minus the muted part. I would recommend, if you enjoy this movie, that you see a doctor immediately. There is a good chance that something serious is wrong with your head. Who knows, maybe there is a tarot card stuck in it.

...that pays lip service to the original movie...which in turn was a somewhat weak adaptation of the original King short story. As such, the focus is on the gore rather than the peripheral back-plot of why the ghost/demons are stalking the protagonist. It's a merely adequate horror movie, but don't go into it looking for a glimmer of the Master's work.