Subject Two is one of those Frankenstein movies that isn’t a Frankenstein but it definitely is, because it has a scientist bringing a dead person back to life. But in this case, he’s killing him and bringing him back to life, and doing it over and over again.

Don’t look at IMDb before you watch this, or you’ll have the big twist spoiled. (And am I spoiling it by telling you that there is a twist?) I wrote down a bunch of notes about the parts of the dialogue that I liked, but I had to throw that all out the window at the end. But let me just say this: when I like to look at the title of a film, Subject Two… who is Subject Two? And in this case, Subject 2 is actually Subject 3, which is, well… the twist.

My friend Eric told me to watch this because I put out a call for movies that are like Frankenstein, but aren’t Frankenstein. This one is really admirable. It’s a low-budget movie, and it takes place all in the snow. It’s not fake Hallmark snow—because it’s a low-budget movie, these guys actually went out and froze their balls off in the snow for however long it takes to make a low-budget movie (two weeks, right?). Listen below or scroll to read.

The Setup

It’s about this failed medical student who has either too many ethics or no ethics—I didn’t catch the gist of the conversation with the professor who was telling him what a piece of trash he was at the beginning of the movie. But he answers someone who meets him online, who asks him to come and be in an experiment. So we’ve got lots of fear being exploited here, too.

I’m not sure what this movie is fully about, but we’ve got a professor who thinks they’re God at the beginning, setting things up for later in the movie. It was shot entirely in Aspen, Colorado (I’m looking at the credits as I talk about this).

Now, this is a bugaboo for me: the main character, Adam, thinks he’s too smart to be in school, so that just gets on my nerves. People who think that they would have done well in school, but that school is just “too stupid” for them… so they go out on their own, and they end up getting killed over and over by a mad scientist who keeps reanimating them. So that’s a thing: kids, stay in school!

What’s Really Going On Here?

As for the other characters:

• There’s a woman who has a small amount of screen time, but she’s very important to the film. She drives Adam to meet the professor he met online, and she is angry all the time while smiling about it—that’s irritating.
• Then there’s the guy at the top of the hill, where Adam walks up the snow to get experimented on. This guy has so many feelings that he has to drink and be sarcastic all the time. Like, if you asked this guy what time it was, he’d say, “It’s 12:41” like you’re just stupid for asking him anything or saying anything to him.

These are my personal fears coming out of this! I don’t really know what the movie was about: Adam died and came back, and he started feeling too much, and then he didn’t feel anything at all.

So you got:

1. The fear of people playing God.
2. The fear of people who are smiling, but angry.
3. A guy who is terminally sarcastic.
4. And maybe the point of the whole thing: some people do not want to have any help at their job. They do not want to train an assistant because they’re afraid the assistant will take over.

And that might be the biggest thing going on in this movie. I’d like to tell you a story about the time that I had an assistant who took over, but I don’t think the statute of limitations has run out…

Final Thoughts

Anyway, my friend Eric has been a blogging friend of mine for probably about 15 years. He’s the one who recommended Subject Two. He has a blog called Eric Undead.

Eric and I met over our shared love of The Exorcist III so long ago that people had not started to re-examine Exorcist IIIyet. It was notable to us that we both liked it, and it’s funny to watch criticism go around and come around—now, pretty much everybody agrees that Exorcist III isn’t underrated, it’s just rated.

I would say that Subject Two is no Exorcist III (or Subject Three, as it should have been called). But it’s definitely underrated, because I go out looking for Frankenstein movies and I had not heard of it. You can find this on Roku (or what would become Howdy, if you want those Roku commercials about the people on the island after the plane crash to go away!).

I recommend that you go check it out, check out Eric at Eric Undead and stay warm!