Return of the Living Dead Part II

1988 "Just when you thought it was safe to be dead."
5.7| 1h29m| R| en
Details

A group of kids discover one of the drums containing a rotting corpse and release the 2-4-5 Trioxin gas into the air, causing the dead to once again rise from the grave and seek out brains.

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Reviews

GrimPrecise I'll tell you why so serious
Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.
Leofwine_draca A few moderately decent special effects are probably the best thing on offer in this lacklustre sequel to the classic comedy/horror yarn, in which the non-existent plot serves to vainly attempt to recapture the highlights from the original. For no explainable reason, the stalwart tag-team of James Karen and Thom Mathews are also brought back from the first film, playing different characters, but exactly the same thing happens to them here as it does in the original! Aside from the overwhelming déjà vu, this is a bigger-scope but lacking film, with the overdone comedy a real bore most of the time. Although there are a fair few macabre gags that pay off (the Michael Jackson homage, the severed head scenes, the disintegrating zombies) for the most part this is an irritating film that contains nothing memorable like the original. Even the music is worse.It's a bog-standard '80s comic horror romp with little brain and even less imagination on offer. The effects of the zombies are decent but the overacting – done by the entire cast now and not just Karen and Mathews – is a really big mistake. In fact there is not one straight character in the film. Just loads of bland teenagers, an annoyingly smart kid, and other extraneous folk who shout and scream a lot. It's pretty embarrassing really. The plot is predictable, the casting instantly forgettable (all long forgotten today, aside from a brief turn by X-FILES star Mitch Pileggi), the jokes just keep getting dumber and dumber. Ignore the bigger budget and heightened effects, the first film in this series is still the one to look out for.
Realrockerhalloween Going a different direction from where one left off the military lose a canister by a nearby graveyard and the dead rise again to boogie the night away.Returning are James Karen and Thom Matthews playing two crypt robbers who are infected. Relying on the situation comedy trope they bumble up trying to warn the city about the threat heading for it and help their numbers grow.The military has evacuated the town leaving a small group to try and fend themselves from the swarm. What the sequel fail to do is mixing horror in with humor making it a lampoonish cartoon, the characters often make meta references like I feel we've been here before and I wanted to see the nuclear wasteland so I may be biased. The pacing is all over the place leaving you exhausted and has the least re watch value.Feeling the most dated it relied on current styles, music and technology which takes away from the horror that it could take place in any place or time. Not the worse sequel ever made, but it didn't offer anything new or enchanting to draw you in. The first was all about world building from rules of engagement for Zombies, characters, atmosphere and how the gas works. It was a quick cash grab on a promising potential script.
GL84 Joining up with friends in a cemetery, a kid's discovery of a long-lost barrel of military-test chemicals finds that the release of the chemicals brings the dead to life and stalking their home-town forcing them to hold off the creatures as they find a way of stopping them.This here was a pretty descent sequel with some fun stuff about it. Among the better features here is the really exciting and enjoyable opening here, which features some nice action and some creepy visuals together for a fun time here as the sprawl through the cemetery and being chased by the bullies where he gets backed inside the mausoleum where he encounters the dead bodies in their caskets and leads into the fantastic resurrection scenes as the billowing cloud slowly works out from the drainage pipe into the cemetery where the gnarled hands break free from the heaving earth in the middle of the pouring rain. The later scene where he confronts the tar-man in the tunnel before the bigger mass-grave exhumation filled with hilarious gags and cheesy music makes for a great blend of suspense and cheesy action, which leads nicely into the race to get out of the cemetery as the swarming hordes of zombies overrun the graveyard in a really enjoyable time here. Even the suburbia scenes here are quite fun with them initially driving around and meeting with the two, the house attack which leads to their hilarious escape attempts and finally sneaking through the neighborhood to escape in the car which has some really fun and enjoyable moments here. Likewise, the film has a really enjoyable and exciting finale here with the soldiers confronting the zombies in a massive shootout before they begin chasing the group through the streets in several different attack scenes while they lead the creatures to the power-plant which has some fantastic action in the mass swarming on the truck that locks them inside, the eventual escape and chasing around the facility both inside the truck and out on foot before utilizing a comically cheesy yet oddly creative and effective disposal method of the zombies that really ends this on a high note. Along with the great zombie make-up and fun cheese, these here make for a really fun time here against the film's few flaws. The film's main problem here is the convoluted and clumsy mid-section here, built entirely around the absolutely tired ploy of nobody believing anything he says here without any reason why which continually leads them into encounters with the zombies when a fair bit of smartness would've prevented endless running around. That would've avoided the time-wasting scenes in the hospital, dealing with the infected friends and their adventures through town which are just unnecessary here and ruin the flow of the film. The other problem here is the rather overbearing sense of cheese here from the jokes, the goofy situations and non-threatening nature of the zombies in their actions here. While it makes the film fun, this one does come off more of a cheesy version of the genre.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language, children-in-jeopardy and questionable child activities.
Anonymous Andy (Minus_The_Beer) More brains? Not exactly. This light-hearted -- if a bit dim-witted -- sequel to the 1985 cult classic "Return of the Living Dead" has a hard time fitting the mold it so desperately crams itself into. Like a young child trying on his father's clothing, "Return of the Living Dead Part II" can't help but come up looking small by comparison. Its attempt at the sort of humor that jived so well in the original falls mostly flat, save for some shock-induced laughter derived from hearing a young child curse so much in one film. It's the sort of thing that happens when you swap the genius of Dan O'Bannon for the guy who directed "Meatballs 2."To its credit, the film is host to some pretty gnarly guts and gore, the sort of stuff that would make George Romero proud. It also helps that the cast is mostly likable, featuring mildly familiar faces of the time such as Suzanne Snyder, Thom Matthews and James Karen (the latter two returning from the first film as different characters) as well as perfectly able newcomers such as Marsha Dietlein as the prototypical girl-next-door genre-standard and Michael Kenworthy as the foul-mouthed rugrat. The film isn't particularly well-written and kind of meanders around without a point, but is worth following to the end thanks to its cast and characters.In spite of its flaws, "Return of the Living Dead Part II" is a relatively entertaining affair that is best taken with expectations lowered and tongue planted firmly in cheek. While it's not a patch on the original, it's at least light-years beyond the fourth and fifth installments. Fans of '80s horror will find themselves enjoying it in spite of their better judgment while the rest will leave it for dead.