Sequels are supposed to expand on the original. Aliens took the haunted-house-in-space concept of Alien and made it a war movie. Terminator 2 turned a time-traveling slasher into a blockbuster about fate. The Dentist 2, on the other hand, takes an already absurd movie about a psychotic tooth doctor and says, “What if we added more cavities, more pliers, and even less reason to care?” This is a film that drills straight past horror, through suspense, and into the black cavity of unintentional comedy.
The Drillmaster Returns
Corbin Bernsen, who clearly lost a bet with his agent, returns as Dr. Alan Feinstone, the world’s least trustworthy orthodontist. At the start, he’s in a maximum-security mental hospital. Don’t ask why a dentist turned serial killer is being held like Hannibal Lecter; the movie never bothers to explain. He tricks a psychiatrist with some sob story about how it wasn’t really him who killed all those people—it was, I don’t know, the Tooth Fairy’s evil twin?
Of course, he escapes using a dental tool he sewed into his own leg. That’s right: he carried around a sharpened pick in his thigh like a man with the world’s most horrifying retainer. From here, the movie follows him as he flees to a small town called Paradise, Missouri, under the fake name “Dr. Lawrence Caine.” Spoiler: Paradise has no dental plan.
Paradise Lost, Teeth Pulled
In Paradise, Dr. Feinstone reinvents himself as a small-town dentist. He charms the locals, moves into a cottage, and quickly sets his sights on Jamie, a woman who looks suspiciously like his mutilated wife. It’s here that the movie really starts to gum up.
First, Alan kills the town’s resident dentist, Dr. Burns, by threatening him with a golf club. That’s right—this isn’t The Dentist 2, it’s Happy Gilmore: The Murder Years. The poor man trips, falls, and dies, because apparently gravity is a bigger killer than our slasher. Alan then naturally inherits his practice, because in the late ’90s apparently all it took to run a medical office was a strong jawline and a convincing lie.
The Tooth Hurts
Let’s talk about the kills, because this is where the movie pretends to shine. One victim gets strapped into the chair for a game of “truth or tooth.” Alan drills straight down to the nerve, then stabs the raw pulp with a plaque scraper like he’s playing Operation with Satan’s steady hand. She screams, she writhes, she bleeds—meanwhile, the audience is just wondering how many more minutes of this tooth porn we’re going to have to endure.
Then there’s Robbie, the unlucky drywall contractor who has the misfortune of being both Jamie’s admirer and an extra in a bad horror movie. He shows up to hang Sheetrock, only to be murdered with a hammer in a fight scene choreographed like two drunk guys wrestling outside a Buffalo Wild Wings.
But the crown jewel of absurdity is Alan, now bleeding, nailed in the face with an actual nail gun, staggering around like Frankenstein’s orthodontist. He doesn’t die, of course—he just walks into his own surprise party, shrugs it off, and drives away laughing while pulling nails out of his skull like they’re toothpicks. Eat your heart out, Pinhead.
Corbin Bernsen: From L.A. Law to L.A. Flaw
Bernsen plays Feinstone like he’s in a completely different film—half tortured Shakespearean antihero, half community-theater Dracula. One minute he’s whispering about decay and germs, the next he’s bashing a man with a hammer while ranting about plaque. If this were The Shining, he’d be the guy in the background scrubbing Danny’s teeth.
The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better. Jillian McWhirter’s Jamie spends the movie wide-eyed and confused, like she’s wondering how she went from auditioning for ER to dodging drills in a backlot dental office. Clint Howard makes a cameo as “Mr. Toothache,” because apparently this film didn’t have enough dental puns already. Even Linda Hoffman returns as Brooke, the tongueless wife, whose role is mostly to shuffle around like a dental ghost and remind us that this franchise had one more movie than it ever deserved.
Budget Cuts, Like a Bad Root Canal
With a budget of $1.8 million, you’d think The Dentist 2 might’ve splurged on something—sets, special effects, literally anything. Instead, it looks like it was shot in a strip-mall orthodontics office after hours. The gore effects are serviceable but uninspired, with lots of fake blood and prosthetic teeth that look like they were bought at Party City. The cinematography is flatter than a dentist’s waiting-room TV, and the score by Alan Howarth sounds like leftover MIDI files from a Sega Genesis game.
Decay as a Theme (and an Editing Style)
The movie wants to be a psychological thriller about obsession, compulsion, and the fear of decay. Instead, it just decays onscreen for 100 minutes. Alan hallucinates germs, maggots, and filthy mouths, but the effects are about as scary as a Colgate commercial gone wrong. The editing drags every scene out like it’s pulling molars without anesthesia. By the time Alan’s wife reappears to seduce him before trying to cut his tongue off, you’re just hoping someone will put this movie out of your misery.
Final Verdict: Pull It Out, Don’t Crown It
The Dentist 2 is the cinematic equivalent of a bad cavity: you know it shouldn’t exist, it hurts when you poke it, and the longer it lingers the worse it gets. Corbin Bernsen gnaws through scenery like a man addicted to sugar, the kills are simultaneously brutal and laughable, and the story makes less sense than dental insurance fine print.
It’s not scary, it’s not funny (at least not intentionally), and it sure as hell isn’t necessary. It’s a movie that drills and drills, but never hits anything except the nerve of your patience.
If horror sequels are like dental visits, The Dentist 2 is that one where the dentist keeps asking if you floss while actively making your gums bleed. You walk out numb, violated, and vowing never to come back.
