YMMV / Dead Again

• Complete Monster: Franklyn Madson, once the seemingly innocent boy "Frankie", is the architect behind all the misfortunes that befall the heroes. Having murdered his mother's employer's wife when said employer, Roman, rejected his mother, Madson feared their reincarnations and gaslights and torments them to kill them for good. Having ensured Roman's death in the past, Madson murders his own mother to cover his tracks and then attempts to kill the reincarnated lovers, intending to destroy every bit of happiness they could ever have.
• Cult Classic: It may not be quite there yet, but if Tumblr's anything to go by, it's certainly well on its way to becoming this.
• Genius Bonus: The prison numbers on Roman's uniform are "25101415" or "25 October 1415," the date of the Battle of Agincourt fought by Henry V—which was the movie Branagh directed just before this one.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Although not completely clear, the cover of the Life magazine issue containing the story on the Margaret Strauss murder had Laurence Olivier as the title role in his movie version of Hamlet. Five years later, Kenneth Branagh went on to direct and star in his own version of Hamlet, also in the title role. (Branagh already had quite a bit in common with Olivier, including their respective film versions of Henry V, and picked that issue of Life as a deliberate shout-out — the reason it's never seen clearly on screen is because he didn't want it to seem too self-indulgent — but the Hamlet connection makes it that much better in hindsight.)
  • After playing a lecherous, disgraced psychiatrist in this film, Robin Williams won an Oscar for playing a sincere and good-hearted member of the profession in Good Will Hunting, who even jokes that hugging his patient is only illegal "if you grab my ass."
• Ho Yay: There's an intimate moment between two men in the movie.
• Moral Event Horizon: In his first two scenes, Carlisle may come off as somewhat abrasive, and he definitely violated professional ethics by sleeping with patients, but he seems to genuinely care about his work (he used to not charge half of his patients), and he helps Grace when Mike consults him for a second opinion about what she's going through. But when Mike tells Carlisle that in a past life, he was Margaret Strauss, and Grace/Amanda was Roman Strauss, and Roman was convicted of killing Margaret, Carlisle's response is that Mike should go ahead and kill Grace/Amanda. Ultimately averted, however, in that Mike doesn't go through with it, because he finds out Roman didn't kill Margaret.
  Carlisle: Karmically speaking, self-defense is quite cool.
• One-Scene Wonder: Campbell Scott as the guy who tries to kidnap Grace, and fights off Mike Jackie Chan style.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Yvette Freeman (later famous as Haleh on ER) is the nurse at the nursing home the elderly Gray Baker lives in.
  • Raymond Cruz (later famous as Det. Julio Sanchez on Major Crimes and Tuco on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) is a clerk at the supermarket Carlisle works at.

---