A man tries to murder his wife for her money, but she may not be as dead as he thinks in Buried Alive II, a follow up sequel to a very successful film from 1990.
We first meet Laura Riskin, the niece of the sheriff Sam from the first movie. She is mourning the recent death of Sam which has devastated the town. At his funeral, we see Clint from the original film show up mysteriously to pay his respects. In Sam's will, it is revealed that he had $250,000 worth in stocks which seems to spark a lot of interest in Laura's husband Randy.
Randy is an unhappy man who wants to buy a boat with the inheritance and leave town, while Laura wants to stay and have children. He begins engaging in an affair with a pretty blonde woman named Roxanne. They eventually decide to murder Laura with poison and take all of the money she got in Sam's will. He poisons her wine one night at dinner, and she has a massive stroke which seems to have killed her. However, the drug didn't finish her off and she is buried alive! Once out of the grave, she exacts revenge against Randy and his mistress.
It's interesting to me that Buried Alive got a Made for TV sequel seven years later considering it was a 90's made for TV film that wasn't all that heard of. Buried Alive II is pretty much a remake of the first movie with the genders of the bad guys and good spouse reversed. Ally Sheedy does however bring something to this movie that Matheson couldn't for me in the first Buried Alive, and that is that I felt really bad for her. She makes her character very likeable and it's hard to imagine why her husband would want to kill her.
Buried Alive II isn't a bad movie. I like that they continued some characters from the original movie including Sam and having Clint come back to town. It is a retelling of the first movie, but there are some differences. Randy is a way worse person than Jennifer Jason Leigh's murderous chatracter was in Buried Alive. I think this hurt the sequel actually because of how one dimensional our main villain was. It also seems like the main villain is just going through a mid life crisis and wanting to buy a yacht, and his main motivation for killing his wife is because she is boring and acts like an old person and because she doesn't want to invest the inheritance into a boat.
Overall, Buried Alive II is a pretty good movie and follow up to a solid first film. But I felt this was unnecessary, especially 7 years after the fact. It adds little to the series other than a good performance by Ally Sheedy who always delivers. Sadly, this is impossible to find. I luckily got the VHS at a yard sale years ago.
5/10
