WARNING! This review contains some SPOILERS! Don't worry, the movies are already pretty spoiled to begin with.The other day I taped the premiers of
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis and
Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave from the Sci-Fi Channel. I've finally got around to watching them... I wish I hadn't.
ROTLD: Necropolis and
ROTLD: Rave to the Grave are numbers 4 and 5 in the series, respectively. It's been a long time since I saw ROTLD 1, 2, and 3. I seem to recall that 3 was kind of cool and 2 was kind of bad. I don't remember if 1 was any good, but a lot of people seem to like it. Just in case you don't know, these movies are
not part of the George Romero series. But clearly from the titles the makers would like you to
think they are.
The fact that these two movies had their world premiers on the same day on the SciFi channel and that they have some of the same characters and actors leads me to believe that they were made at the same time. They were also obviously made on a budget and in Europe (as evidenced by the proliferation of European accents among the "American" high school students.)
Let's start with
ROTLD: Necropolis, or as I prefer NeCRAPolis. It's no surprise that the movie is derivative. Many zombie movies are.
28 Days Later is highly derivative, but it's still a damn fine movie. Unfortunately
ROTLD: Necropolis is derivative and is not a damn fine move. Specific it's derivative of
Resident Evil. There's an extremely large corporation, Hybra-Tech, that has it's hands in everything and is experimenting with a chemical that turns people into zombies (Trioxin which is in all the ROTLD movies.) Sound familiar yet? Wait there's more. Hybra-Tech wants to turn the zombies into weapons for the government. Some have even been outfitted with cybernetic weapons.
Unfortunately instead of
Milla Jovovich, we get a bunch of dumbass high school kids. Just how dumb their asses are does not become apparent until the next movie. There's this one kid, Julian. His Uncle Charlie is the scientist responsible for the Necropolis project or zombie project or whatever the hell it's called. Julian finds out some very unpleasant things concerning his uncle and the death of his parents. Things which make Julian very angry with Charlie. Remember that. It's important later.
Anyway, the acting is mostly bad, the script is mostly lame, and the gore isn't cool enough to make up for any of that.
On to
Rave to the Grave. This time the film makers have decided to rip off
House of the Dead by setting the zombie attack at a rave. That's right
House of the Dead. Damn it! Folks, if you're going to rip off another movie, at least rip off a good one.
Remember Uncle Charlie? He got away at the end of the last movie, but he gets what's coming to him at the beginning of this move when he tries to sell some Trioxin to... I'm not sure who they were, gangsters maybe? Well, the deal goes bad and- you know- ZOMBIES! Charlie and several other people die.
When nephew Julian hears about his Uncles death he's very sad. Now, in the last movie Julian was pretty pissed at Charlie and ready to kill him. Now he's all grieving and crap. Then he goes poking through Uncle Charlie's stuff and finds some large government canisters. One is clearly missing. Does Julian say, "Oh no. This might be more zombie stuff. I'd better destroy it or call the authorities." NO! Julian and all his friends who survived that last movie seem to have forgotten everything that happened to them the last time. Julian starts messing around with the stuff. Then he takes it to some friends so they can mess around with it. Not until the friends discover that Trioxin can be used as a recreational drug does Julian finally say, "hey we shouldn't fool around with this. Lets call the authorities." But by then it's too late. The dumbassery has begun.
From the title you may have guessed that the drug, "Z," gets widely distributed at a rave and nearly everyone dies. Sadly, the head dumbass Julian does not.
Both of these movies seem intended to be clever and funny. They are not. Go watch
Shaun of the Dead again instead. Both
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis and
Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave get one bloody cross between them.
Like former Hunter of the Week Wesley Windham-Pryce, Cordelia Chase went through an amazing transformation through the course of her career as a vampire hunter and monster killer as chronicled in the television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and in Dark Horse Comics.
Cordelia went from vapid cheerleader to higher power to helpful ghost (with an anoying stop along the way to give birth to a death godess, but let's not talk about that.) "Cordy" was a true champion and is sorely missed.
