Nerds That Geek Movie Review – ‘Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

​I’ve always found it fascinating, how a vast majority of film franchises simply go off of the proverbial deep end at some point during their existence and just begin to churn out one low quality movie after another. It could be related to franchise fatigue and the people that take up the reins simply believe no one is watching anymore, so why bother putting maximum effort into future stories. Plus, if people are no longer interested, financiers aren’t willing to put up big bucks to have sequels made, allowing for low quality to become the standard for a once proud saga, aiding to its transition into oblivion.
 
If anything, this particular process and problem is on my mind today because, you can usually pinpoint when that dark moment arrives for a franchise, and when it comes to the Return of the Living Dead saga, that particular moment of sorrow came about in 2005, when back to back sequels arrived on home video that were, for lack of a better phrase, just awful. Because Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis, brought forth all kinds of changes for a saga that once stood for quality horror and fun and quirky ideas and I won’t lie to you, this was a tough one to sit through, for so many reasons.
 
First and foremost, let’s talk about some of the odd changes that came about in this film to make it so incredibly off-putting, like the fact that the zombies received a complete redesign, the kind that removes their power. Because if you recall, the original living dead that we came to know and love in this saga, were virtually indestructible, but here, these zombies go down easy, with either a head shot or even a good blast to the chest and well, that no longer makes them scary. Instead they’re just shambling pieces of meat that can be easily dealt with, making it quite amazing that anyone is bitten or harmed by these pathetic creatures in the slightest, and to make matters worse, this issue just scratches the surface when it comes to the problems in this movie.
 
In fact, it’s best to just say it now because there’s no nice way to put this; everything in this movie is just terrible. It’s cliché, it’s slow, the gore is ineffective and boring, and the acting is equally as abysmal. Which is surprising when one considers that Peter Coyote is in this film, but he phones in his performance here and that only helps to bore the audience and well, when all is said and done, these changes and this lack of quality are infuriating to say the least. Because this story actually attempted to do something interesting with the plot by giving us a mega corporation that worked to help rid the world of the zombie scourge and some cool stuff could have come out of that, if the movie bothered to explore that dynamic further, rather than supplying us with the old ‘they’re evil after all’ cliché.
 
But alas, lazy storytelling is the focus here, and the characters are so dry and one dimensional, that at no point can you become attached to them, or their plight and all of these missteps make this movie an unmitigated disaster. One that clearly shows that the ROTLD saga had in fact, run out of ideas, and while this entry in the series should have signaled its unfortunate end since this is a genuine fall from grace, this was merely the beginning of the end of the saga. For I made mention of another sequel, and that particular film is where the franchise truly bid farewell to the fans, thanks to its ludicrous storyline…  

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