ark Ryan (Gibson) is a cop on the trail of a vicious serial killer. He's also a loving husband and an all-around good guy. However, when that vicious killer murders his wife, even capturing the man won't ease Mark's grief. Five years later, he watches as the killer, William Charles Lee (Bossell), is put to death by lethal injection. His wife's death and the execution send Mark into a tailspin that affects his work, and he's reassigned to a prestigious university.
At the university, Mark meets an eager security guard named Chris (Christopher Morris). Mark also runs into a pretty grad student, Eve (Heigl), who is working with a brilliant professor named Arkin on research that involves using nanotechnology to bring dead tissue back to life.
Almost immediately, Mark finds himself in the middle of strange happenings when he's forced to shoot and kill a suspect in the university's medical research morgue. No one is quite sure what the suspect was doing there, and Mark's police captain is angry. He takes away Mark's gun until the investigation rules that the shooting was justified.
The next day, Prof. Arkin learns that his research money is being terminated and his lab is being closed just before he's about to start human trials. He's furious, but Eve convinces him that they can go ahead with the experiment. That evening, security guard Chris sees something going on involving the two that seems odd, and he follows them. Arkin and Eve begin to bring a cadaver back to life as Chris watches from hiding.
After getting a call from Chris, Mark goes to the university to help him. He ends up arresting Arkin, but before he knows what's going on, the cadaver is gone and the dead man walking has knocked Eve unconscious. As the murders start to mount and the police begin to suspect Mark, he soon discovers that the resurrected man is someone he knows all too well. Someone he watched die once—someone who will keep killing until he's stopped.
A serial killer flick where logic is the victim
Frankenstein was a classic, and it's prime material for an updated movie version. Unfortunately, Evil Never Dies is not in any way worthy, because a terrible script wastes the resources and cast of this film. Filled with poor character development and ludicrous twists and turns, this movie is just painful to watch.
The idea about nanotechnology being used to bring the dead back to life is an interesting one that instantly brings forth profound questions about morality and the human soul. However, none of those issues makes it into the film. The premise is just an excuse to watch a one-note Jason-type serial killer murder people while playing with our hero's mind.
Gibson's good enough to breathe some emotion into the story about Mark losing his wife. He looks sad, beaten and haunted. Heigl has some nice early moments as the girl who might be Mark's salvation, and Chris Kirby, as Mark's cop partner, Cole, is fresh and realistic onscreen. But for every good moment or scene, there are several terrible ones. The killer's only motivation seems to be that he's evil. Especially bad are the characterizations of the police captain and psychiatrist. They appear to exist solely to yell at Mark about how he should get on with his life, since it's been an entire day since his wife's murderer was put to death.
The police angle in this film is ridiculous every step of the way. A cop who repeatedly used excessive force after a traumatic personal event would be put on leave or suspended, not sent to a college campus. At the very least he'd be given desk duty where he wasn't a danger to the public. And after a shooting where a man is killed, he would never have his gun taken away by the captain and then be sent back on duty instantly with no gun. Mark's cop partner is surprised both times Mark steals his gun. And why did no one tell the other cops about the moving corpse in the basement so they could at least check out the scene? It's all silly, it makes no sense, and you just want to yell at the screen because of all the stupid things the characters are doing.
