Michael_Elliott 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.

Paul Andrews 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.

jillrc I watched this movie strictly on a default basis - there was nothing else on! What a pleasant surprise! I highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a good mystery. Excellent acting, good plot twists. Very high quality for a made for TV movie.

Tiger95 I'd give "Evil Never Dies" 3 stars out of 5. At first I was disappointed. 1. It seemed like a typical "made for tv Superstation movie." and 2. I felt like the writer/ director had made some mistakes that made the plot harder to follow.However, I was wrong. Stick with the movie. It WILL make sense in the end. Probably less action movie than the typical Superstation fare, "Evil Never Dies" gives your brain something to work out.