Review #120: Return of the Living Dead III (1993)

This review was originally written in October 2021.

October 2021 Horror Movie Review #6- Return of the Living Dead III

Alright, finally we've gotten a Return of the Living Dead sequel that neither has the exact same plot as the first one, nor uses the same actors in identical roles. I guess this movie has that going for it. However, it doesn't have much else. This film follows a bumbling government agency trying to find some way to harness/contain the power of the zombies they've created, and one of the higher-ups' idiot son who ruins everything.

I'll just get this out there: I HATE Curt, the main character of this film, and his character arc makes me angry. From minute one he is causing problems everywhere he goes, hurting everyone around him, and at no point- no point whatsoever- does he get anything resembling a comeuppance. His girlfriend (of a couple months maximum) dies and he breaks into the ineptly-guarded army base to use this zombie-creating gas on her, putting her into an existential waking nightmare of constant pain and loss of self that she never asked for. Then he gets a shop clerk killed and gets a group of thugs chasing after them, a homeless man helps out only to get shot and eventually killed and zombified for his kindness, and Curt ultimately receives less than a slap on the wrist from the government for, you know, potentially dooming the world by creating another zombie outbreak. The dad has a heartfelt moment with him, telling his son how hard it was to let his mother go after she died, as if to encourage the son to do the same for his zombie girlfriend. But when he finds out she's going to be used as a bio-weapon, Curt sabotages the entire base and gets a ton of people (including himself) killed.

There's a great moment earlier in the film, when River Man does Curt a huge favor. When Curt tries to thank him, River Man gives him a Mardi Gras token, telling him it's a reminder to pay it forward. If he does a favor for someone else, and gives them the token, then they do a favor for someone else, and give them the token, and so on- then as long as that token is out there, there'll be good deeds going on in the world. Great, right? So at the end of the film, when Curt gives the token BACK to River Man (who has been shot, brutally murdered, and then involuntarily turned into an eternally-tortured slave), he uses the token to get RIVER MAN to do HIM, ANOTHER FAVOR. That is not how ANY of this works. "I helped you out, so here's a token that will get you to help out someone else" does NOT equate to "I helped you out, so make me help you out again later". Such a stupid thing to call back to. Don't put a callback in your film if the callback is going to completely miss the point of what it's calling back to!

Curt is terrible. Whoever wrote him as the protagonist is also terrible. Having him volunteer to stay back and die rather than continue the outbreak HE STARTED isn't heroic, it's the BARE MINIMUM NEEDED to not be THE WORST EVER. So many people died because this stupid kid was a stupid kid and "I guess I'll stop making things actively worse" isn't reparations for that.

All of that aside, this movie continues the trend of establishing how sapient the zombies are, and that's terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. This movie has a lot of self-harm in it, on the part of the zombie girl who can only stop her hunger through self-harm, and that's quite disturbing. I can't tell if it was meant to be some sort of a metaphor, or if they just wanted to disturb the audience, but whatever the case it made my skin crawl which may have been the desired outcome.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Potential Farscape Crossovers

Fun Arcade Tidbit: The arcade cabinet in the convenience store is very clearly made up to resemble a Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition cabinet, but instead bears the fictional title "Tournament Champion".