After college student Crawford Tillinghast (Dane Oliver) and his friends experimented with the “Resonator” at Miskatonic University, they have been having weird dreams and strange hallucinations of a sexy squid woman beckoning to them. She corrupts one of Crawford’s friends into committing suicide, which spurns him into trying to shut down the Resonator once and for all. Meanwhile, a new student named Herbert West (Josh Cole) arrives on campus and starts conducting experiments to bring the dead back to life.
Beyond the Resonator is a solid continuation of the surprisingly enjoyable The Resonator: Miskatonic U. It’s basically Charles Band’s MCU-inspired reboot of From Beyond and Re-Animator placed under the umbrella of one cinematic universe. (In this case, the “MCU” doesn’t stand for “Marvel Cinematic Universe”, but “Miskatonic Cinematic Universe”.) It’s not a patch on the originals (I mean, you can’t top the classics), but it is nevertheless a fun, breezy good time. It’s certainly a lot better than the usual Full Moon offerings, that’s for sure.
Writer/director William (Baby Oopsie) Butler does a good job honoring what came before while at the same time creating something new and giving this series its own distinct identity. While it never quite attains the madcap fun of From Beyond or Re-Animator, it does feature what I believe to be the screen’s first zombie koala attack. That alone is enough for me to hold it in high esteem.
Cole has some pretty big shoes to fill in the Herbert West role, but I’ll be damned if they don’t fit him like a glove. He does a dead-on Jeffrey Combs impression and is a lot of fun to watch while conducting his unspeakable experiments. Although no one else in the cast comes close to matching his intensity (the From Beyond segments are noticeably weaker than the Re-Animator stuff), I’d recommend the film based solely on his perfectly pitched performance. Whenever he’s re-animating, the movie really comes alive.
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