Today I revisit the horror franchise where the zombies are obsessed with brains. Ironically, that probably means they wouldn’t care for this movie.
It’s the return of the living dead… again! I had a blast watching the original Return of the Living Dead (itself a backdoor sequel to one of horror cinema’s most enduring and iconic classics), a film that is, yes, deranged and lascivious, but also so profoundly silly that it has the tone of a Nickelodeon sitcom at times. Part III is also a good time, equally wild but considerably more serious-minded, maybe to a fault for a franchise like this. So I was super excited to check out the middle chapter, the Empire Strikes Back or The Two Towers of the trilogy. Would this follow the trend of those films and become my favorite entry, balancing the series’ trademark goofiness with more mature horror and satisfyng me like baby bear’s perfectly toasty bowl of porridge? Well… no, it would not.
Surprisingly, Part II veers away from a lot of the insanity of the first movie, going so far as casting a child as the primary protagonist. It is still tonally similar, but missing the edge of the more adult elements and lacking the resources to pull off the zombie effects, it falls well short of its predecessor. I was left pretty disappointed with this installment given how successful the surrounding movies are. In a vacuum, I think I could have found more to enjoy in the movie. The performances are charmingly amateurish, particularly Brenda, the enamored girlfriend of a grave robber who willingly lets her zombie boyfriend ravish her (zombie-wise, not sexually) out of a misplaced sense of devotion. There are oodles of zombies in the movie, and while they are neither scary nor particularly screen-ready, the non-stop onslaught of the living dead feels very on-brand for the franchise. The gore is tamped down on a relative basis, but we are still talking about a pretty bloody brand of zombie flick where the action all happens on-screen. I found it especially enjoyable how the zombies were able to bite through human skulls like they offered less resistance than a Cadbury Egg.
I don’t recommend Return of the Living Dead Part II. Whenever I have the urge to visit this cinematic universe, I will first and most frequently reach for the original installment, but I will also revisit Part III on occasion in the future. I will likely never watch this movie again in my life. I don’t hate it, and I appreciate the effort, but I just can’t see any reason to pull the most sanitized and least artistically successful version of this story off the shelf.
Komentarze