This film is showing on Netflix Instant US. Visit Blog of the Living Dead for details.
Vector image for zombie movie return of the living dead 4 necropolis
So I did have a copy of this film recorded from the Sci Fi channel, but I figured that i’d rather watch a film without advert breaks and bleeped out swearing so I purchased both this film and the 5th one at the same time. Man, that was a mistake. Having no adverts is no real redeeming feature, except that I suppose that no adverts means that this lasts about 10 minutes less, but that still leaves the 90 odd minutes of actual ‘film’ to sit through. Urgh.
Where to start with this dog turd of a film? I won’t bore you with any plot details because it is almost as irrelevant as the rest of the film, so I guess i’ll just get the good bits out of the way to fill a sentence or two: There are some pretty girls in this film. And the actual Zombie makeup itself is kind of cool I suppose.
That’s pretty much it as far as enjoyment goes. This film is so clearly a corporate zombie film, put together with no actual respect for either the Return of the Living Dead series itself, or even Zombie films as a whole. Oh, let’s get some sexy and highly cliche teenagers (and terrible actors), group them together and send them off on stupid adventures! Sounds like a winning plan there. It is also apparent that the filmmakers invented (ie stole) 3 gore methods and reused each of them over and over and over and over and over.
“Ooh, squibs under some Scrubs makes it look like gunshots so lets do that every 5 minutes!”
“Ooh, a bullet to the forehead where blood squirts out looks cool, lets do that every 6 minutes!”
“Ooh, a Zombie pretending to bite the back of a guys head and coming out with a mouthful of hair looks pretty dumb, but lets do that every 7 minutes anyway!”
AWESOME!
Sure, each of those effects looked okish first time I saw them in the film, but who wants to see them used to dispatch every single Zombie (of which there are hundreds)?
Please. The Zombies are about as tough as the Fraggles, and seem to be killed just with a bullet wound to the chest or two. Have the film makers even SEEN the original film? (Well they may have, as there is a passing quote “Send More Security Guards…” which is just insulting more than anything).
On top of all that there aren’t even any Norks on show. What is the world coming to eh?
Gore Score C
Norks Score E
Overall Score E
Lets see how Part 5 compares to this one eh? Well, it can’t be much worse.
Devouring the Zombie Films of the Living 