Evil Never Dies (2003)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Good movie but grossly overrated

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

"Evil Never Dies" is a decent enough slasher without a whole lot else about it.**SPOILERS**After the death of his wife, Detective Mark Ryan, (Thomas Gibson) catches the serial killer, William Charles Lee, (Simon Bossell) who he had been actively involved in hunting, and is able to get him sentenced to death. Due to the instability of his nature, he is transferred to campus security for nearby Halmont College, and is assigned to be partnered with Chris Thompson, (Christopher Norris) a fellow campus security worker. Upon arriving, he meets up with Professor Arkin, (John Waters) and his assistant Eve, (Katherine Heigl) and tries to get acclimated to campus life. Told of new medical experiments they are conducting in a state-of-the-art lab on campus, a series of break-ins in the morgue start to concern him, and all attempts to find out are restricted. Going to her for help, he learns about their true intentions with chemical treatments to revive dead cells in human bodies. Realizing that one of the subjects is the same killer he caught, he tries to stop them from experimenting on him, only for the experiment to work, reanimating him and sending him on another rampage and forcing him to stop the killer again.The Good News: This here was a somewhat overall decent film. One of the few things it gets right is that rather complicated way of explaining the killer's emergence into the world, as there's a lot of good to come from these. The method of doing so, with the detailed and quite efficient manner with it's long sequences inside the lab with all the medical experiments and equipment making for a series of great scenes that showcase how much went into the back-story about the reanimation. The scene it happens in is quite fun and the organization of how it goes down is quite the blast to see. There's also quite a few decent chases in here in the second half. Most of the second half actually is a chase, from the creepy escape in the fog-shrouded parking lot to the one through the quad into the medical lab, this one has a lot of great, exciting chases. There's a fun shootout in a motel parking lot, a really great encounter in the lab and the final confrontation is a real blast. The last part of this that works is the tense opening, which is pretty strong to feature in a film like this and it starts off the film with a strong, cruel opening. These here are the film's good parts.The Bad News: This here has a few problems to it that are a little damaging. The fact that it takes so long to accept the situation is a little hard to believe, and this one handles it the wrong way. This one has the one person who knows the truth yelling it at the same people over and over again, despite being in the proper situation to convince others and the fact that the repeat occurrences of the same situation does the film no favors. It just looks sloppy and lazy to keep doing that. Also quite sloppy is the twist at the end, which is quite easy to spot, makes no sense and seems to be there just to keep the film going, which it really should've done a better job of doing so. The fact that being unable to stretch the film out points to the fact that it is way too short. This is barely over an hour, and much of that time is spent on it going into depth over the chemical experiments, leaving a large portion of the film action-less with only a couple scattered moments to keep it going but mostly nothing of excitement happens and the short amount of screen-time with the actual action is so clustered at the end it becomes imminently noticeable. The last flaw in here is the that it feels way too sanitized and cleaned up that it feels like the made-for-TV film it was made to be. The kills are bloodless, the violence is non-existent and neutered to feature kills that won't provide any to begin with and there's no nudity in the sex scene. There's more to come from this factor, and are all apart of the film's flaws.The Final Verdict: With a few good parts to it, this one here is certainly watchable but there's not a whole lot here to it. Give it a shot if nothing else is on or available or if you're a fan of these TV-thrillers, otherwise this one can be easily skipped without missing on anything.Rated R: Violence, Language and a mild sex scene

Evil Never Dies (2003) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Made for TV take on the Frankenstein story has an early performance by Katherine Heigl from Knocked Up fame and this is the only reason I watched this but the movie turned out to be pretty good. Thomas Gibson plays a cop who has his life turned upside down after a serial killer murders his wife. The killer dies via lethal injection but a nutty scientist steals his body and eventually brings him back to life. Once alive, the killer goes after the cop who has now befriended a woman (Heigl) who helped in the scientist's experiment. I wasn't expecting too much out of this film but some tight direction really picks this up and makes this better than most of your made for TV films out there. The opening sequence with the cop's wife getting murdered contains some nice suspense and the director does a great job at building the scene. The movie goes by at a very fast pace and Gibson makes for a good leading character. Heigl adds nice support as well. The film's biggest problem are some incredibly stupid plot holes that take place to make the cop look crazy. These scenes come off pretty badly and are just downright stupid but outside of this the film works on many levels.

Evil Never Dies starts as evil neck breaking serial killer William Charles Lee (Simon Bossell) murders Abby Ryan (Zoe Naylor) the wife of Detective Mark Ryan (Thomas Gibson) who is currently trying to bring him to justice, Mark runs after William & manages to capture him & just about keep himself from killing him. Jump forward a few years & Willaim Charles Lee is executed in the gas chamber & Detective Ryan has been transfered to act as a liaison officer at a local college after several violent incidents, he teams up with campus security guard Chris Thompson (Christopher Morris) who is a bit gung-ho in his attitude. One night while watching the old science building Chris notices genetic scientist Professor Arkin (John Waters) & his pretty assistant Eve (Katherine Heigl) enter it without permission, he call Ryan who finds out that they were conducting experiments on the re-animation of dead cells, their test subject was the serial killer Willaim Charles Lee & the experiments prove more successful than they could have imagined...Co-produced & directed by Uli Edel this made-for-TV effort seems to have a pretty bad reputation but I have to admit I quite liked it, I wasn't expecting anything from the film so maybe that helped raise my affinity for it but I honestly didn't think it was too bad at all. The script by Max Enscoe, Annie de Young, Farhad Mann & Barry Sandler (it took four people to write this?) takes itself very seriously & even though it sounds like a straight Frankenstein type horror film it's more of a thriller drama as the only real horror element is the bringing back to life of William Charles Lee the serial killer because after that it completely ignores the genetic experiment angle of the film & actually kills Professor Arkin off & never mentions it again. Evil Never Dies then concentrates on Ryan tracking down William & trying to convince his superiors & friends that he is still alive killing people which he gets blamed for who predictably don't believe him. Another reason why I quite liked this is because of the neat twist ending which I didn't see coming, I thought it was going to be pretty routine & predictable all the way but the ending was a bit of a nice surprise. It moves along at a reasonable pace, there's just about enough going on to stop you from falling asleep, the character's & dialogue are serviceable & I thought it was a decent little film that exceeded my very low expectations.Director Udel does OK & considering the low TV budget this looks alright, there's not much style but it's watchable if nothing else. I would have liked a bit more horror in it & forget about any blood or gore as there isn't any, William Charles Lee is a serial killer who breaks necks so unfortunately there's no need for any expensive gory special effects. I wouldn't say it's particularly scary either, sorry.Technically it's fine, it's well made & has reasonable production values. This was actually filmed in Melbourne in Australia although you won't really notice as it looks just like any American city. The acting is OK & it's always nice to see total babe Katherine Heigl in something, Australian Simon Bossell who plays the serial killer here will probably be better known to millions of viewers throughout the world as Alan Fisher from the Australian soap Home and Away in which he appeared in nearly 300 episodes.Evil Never Dies is never going to make anyone's top 10 best films list but I certainly don't think it deserves all the hate it has on the IMDb, it's nothing overly special sure but I still thought it was alright & it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

I saw this movie on Sunday Evening on TBS. I am a big fame of Made-for-TV movies and this is one of the better ones. The actors were established but the plot was predictable. I thought the locations in Melbourne Australia were good. There were a few loopholes in the movie but considering the entire concept of awakening from the dead is incredible-I guess these can be forgiven