Review #119: Return of the Living Dead II (1988)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #5- Return of the Living Dead II (1988)

I am utterly baffled by this film. At first my reaction was "This really seems like the creators looked at The Return of the Living Dead, and just like... did that, again." However, the more I looked into it, I realized THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID.

The basic plot of the movie is the same as the previous film: the army improperly handled some chemicals that create zombies, and those chemicals get unleashed on an unsuspecting small town. Two bumbling jokers get infected and eventually turn to zombies, and in the meantime the chemicals seep into a nearby graveyard and cause the corpses to rise up. In the end, the army is contacted and they take care of the situation with lethal force.

That alone makes it worth a raised eyebrow, but the whole time I was also thinking "Gosh, the two bumbling jokers that get slowly turned to zombies in the second movie look a LOT like the two bumbling jokers that get slowly turned to zombies in the first movie." And you know what? IT WAS THE SAME ACTORS. They hired the same two actors to play basically the same two roles covering the same story arc in two consecutive films in the same series, three years apart. I just don't get it.

Overall the movie was fine, and on its own I would probably give it a pretty good rating, but considering it's almost a carbon copy of the immediate previous film makes me dock it several points. I would rewatch Return in a heartbeat, but Return II holds very little interest to me.

Overall Rating: 5/10 Spider-Man comics

Most Fourth-Wall Breaking Line: "I feel like we've been here before. You... Me... Them!"