Lightning did not strike twice in the sequel sweepstakes for Stephen King or Edward Furlong with PET SEMATARY TWO, on Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

After his actress mother Renee (Darlanne Fluegel, THE EYES OF LAURA MARS) dies in a freak accident on set, grieving fourteen-year-old Jeff Matthews (Furlong, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY) moves to the sleepy town of Ludlow with his father Chase (Anthony Edwards, TOP GUN) to take over the abandoned veterinary practice of Louis Creed. Resenting the burgeoning romance between his father and young housekeeper Marjorie (Sarah Trigger, DEADFALL), the only real friend he makes is Drew (Jason McGuire, FORREST GUMP), the abused, overweight son of Sheriff Gus Gilbert (Clancy Brown, BLUE STEEL). Local bully Clyde (Jared Rushton, BIG) delights in telling Jeff about what happened to the Creed family and the existence of the cursed Indian burial ground beyond the town's pet cemetery, which is convenient when cruel Gus shoots Drew's dog Zowie. They bury the mutt which comes back more aggressive and Chase is puzzled as to why the dog's gunshot wound will not heal and why it does not appear to have a heartbeat. When Gus is mortally wounded during a fight with Drew and comes back more unpredictably changed, Jeff ponders whether the burial ground can allow him to reunite with his mother… and it will take another bloodbath to learn the lesson that "sometimes… dead is better."

Director Mary Lambert's sequel to the successful Stephen King adaptation PET SEMATARY, PET SEMATARY TWO is at its best an attempt to do something different tonally, and at its worst more of the same. However melodramatic Lambert's take on the first film sometimes was, the film's sense of loss of characters (human and otherwise) was deeply felt, and its horrors mostly effective possibly in spite of a swipe from Pupi Avati's more unnerving ZEDER. The sequel falls flat in its virtually all of its attempts to move the viewer from its opening sequence onwards introducing characters it hopes the viewers will like who might as well have victim stamped on their foreheads. The film's overstated dark humor clashes on the one hand with scenes depicting the horrors of the world as seen by Furlong's and McGuire's adolescent characters, but Brown's over-the-top resurrected sheriff and Rushton's bully entertain and somehow manage to keep the film from spilling over into bad taste with its greater emphasis on animal killings than human ones. Steve Johnson (NIGHT OF THE DEMON) contributes some prosthetics within the confines of an R-rating as well as some effective animatronic animal bits, but they fail to deliver as viscerally as any of the violence of the first film. The opening and structure of the film does call to mind the eighties voodoo horror film THE BELIEVERS but also seems to have been subsequently the blueprint for Tobe Hooper's MORTUARY.

Both PET SEMATARY and PET SEMATARY TWO receive barebones anamorphic DVD releases in the early 2000s, but the latter film remained that way even as the first film received a special edition DVD then Blu-ray and 4K UHD editions (to coincide with the release of the remake). While an HD master had made the rounds on streaming services, Scream Factory's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray boasts of being sourced from a new 4K scan of the original camera negative; and yet the transfer does not really pop in terms of color or detail. There are some nice textures in close-ups of the clothes and the animals (real and animatronic) but some digital manipulation may be as much to blame as the surprisingly bland photography of James Cameron regular Russell Carpenter (LADY IN WHITE). The film was mixed in Dolby Stereo, but a 5.1 mix was prepared for the DVD release and is presumably what we get here in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (along with a lossless 2.0 track), with good use made of the surrounds for atmosphere and scares but nothing can help the alternately bland and bombastic scoring of Mark Governor (LAND OF DOOM). Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

Whatever one's feelings about the film, the audio commentary with Lambert does give insight into what she tried to do with the film after abandoning the initial concept which would have brought back the first film's only survivor Ellie Creed (Lambert was advised that the studio did not think a teenage girl lead could carry a horror film). She discusses the film's dark humor as possibly ahead of its time, carrying over the first film's theme of acceptance of death while also adding to it the coming of age/death of innocence angle, and how she felt the perspective of teenage boys drove the film's narrative (as a seeming justification for the same decisions that seem more irrational here than in the first film). In "Young and Brooding" (13:32), actor Furlong (looking like he has lived hard) recalls being approached by TERMINATOR 2 casting director Mali Finn on the street and asked if he wanted to audition for a movie, and how the experience of the Cameron film prepared him for PET SEMATARY TWO when it came to some of the fiery stunt work, the film's make-up effects, and his impressions of making movies as a teenager. McGuire makes some similar observations in "My First Film" (24:23) with regard to bonding with Furlong, being star-struck by Andrews and Brown, the animal training, and shooting his death scene.