Reanimator is a classic because you can’t beat the combination of Stuart Gordon, H. P. Lovecraft, Jeffrey Combs, and Barbara Crampton. However, we live in the now, so yes, there’s a reimagining happening.
Combs plays Herbert West in the original movie, a scientist who is trying to ‘restart’ a human body. In the original Reanimator, he does this with great success and goes on to win awards and live happily ever after. Yeah, right, not with Lovecraft involved.
Filming has started on this new Reanimator, which stars Joseph Morgan, Katie Cassidy, Emma Reinagel, Jack Lancaster, and Tristan Wilder Hallett. Michael Grossman is directing, with Jade Sandberg Wallis penning the script. The story:
A gifted yet unstable doctor’s dangerous experiments with reanimation lead to terrifying consequences as his obsession with conquering death spirals out of control.
Reanimating the dead, what could go wrong? We’ve all tried it, right? Guys?
The official synopsis reads:
As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death.
Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession. Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue.
Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.
Do we need a new Reanimator?
