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After the pleasant surprise that was the first “Return of the Living Dead”, a movie title that already sounds like a sequel, I was curious if they could maintain the level of quality. When the credits came on screen I was surprised as the main two cast members from the previous movie returned for the sequel since they died in the first one. Oh, screen writers, what kind of surprises do you have in store for me?
Nothing much actually as the movie is basically a retread from the previous film, though there’s sadly no nude chick running around all the time. The returning cast members, James Karen and Thom Mathews, once again play a couple of colleagues who stumble upon a cemetery filled with Zombies due to the release of the same gas as in the first movie. At a certain point they come in contact with the gas (again) and slowly turn into Zombies themselves (again) resulting in Matthews chasing his girlfriend in a chapel (AGAIN!). Instead of a group of friends, this time the other people trying to escape the Zombies are a family of which the main member is the typical too smart young kid. The same stock character Macauley Culkin portrayed in Home Alone.
Return of the Living Dead Part II doesn’t have the freshness of the first movie. It’s a retread of the original but with different action scenes. Some of them are pretty good but on a whole they don’t redeem the rest of the movie which constantly felt like repeat of the first movie. There’s one interesting element in which the army has sealed of the town and refuses to let anybody out, an element also used in The Dark Knight Rises.
