Upon retrieving a shiv that he secretly implanted in his arm, the dentist escapes the mental institution by taking his psychiatrist hostage. It turns out that he had been hiding money from the IRS in a small town bank under an alias for years. Assuming the alias as his new identity, he rents a guest cottage from a young woman named Brooke who somewhat resembles his ex-wife, Jamie. Jamie, you’ll remember, is the one whose infidelities made the dentist lose his mind in the first place. Played by Jillian McWhirter, she and Corbin Bernsen are the only returning cast members from the original film.
Jamie, now a mute, has gotten cosmetic surgery after the dentist maimed her and removed her teeth and tongue in the previous film. When she learns he escaped captivity, she hires a private detective to track him down. Meanwhile, through a series of unlikely but predictable events, the dentist finds himself practicing once again, trading the ultra-sterile look of the first film for an old fashioned oak office with tons of shadows. I happen to like sequels that look radically different than the original, but whereas The Dentist’s look ran contrary to typical horror films, The Dentist 2 unfortunately looks a lot more average.
Another downgrade is the cast. Whereas the original film had a number of great character actors, the sequel casts mostly unknowns. Two exceptions are Wendy Robie and Clint Howard, performers who could have easily taken up the slack if they had just been given more to do, but Robie is criminally underutilized while Howard is killed almost as quickly as he’s introduced. I’m also scratching my head over why they went through the trouble of recasting McWhirter as the dentist’s ex when there’s ultimately little reason for her to be in it. In fact, the filmmakers went out of their way to ignore a great setup that practically writes itself: have the dentist struggling to rehabilitate while his wife takes up a revenge plot.
The most major downgrade is the absence of the original’s screenwriters, which included Stuart Gordon. In yesterday’s review, I said I felt they had milked the premise for all it’s worth. The sequel proves it. Even Bernsen isn’t firing on all cylinders until the very end. The original film, though technically meaner, was able to balance its darkness with subtle humor and thrills. The Dentist 2, on the other hand, feels meaner, but only because it’s mean without purpose. By the time the villain straps the hapless secretary who will bear the worst of the torture, it isn’t clever, it isn’t entertaining… it’s just going through the motions.
I guess it’s not a terrible movie. It’s well made and looks better than it cost (south of a million bucks). It just never finds a reason to exist.
