Return Of The Living Dead: Necropolis

Return Of The Living Dead: Necropolis is the 4th entry into the franchise, and boy do I wish it wasn’t. Yes, most franchises suffer from running out of steam by this point, but the drop-off in quality between part 3 and this entry is nothing short of shocking. I watched this cinematic turd, so you don’t have to…

Synopsis:

Charles, a scientist working for the powerful and evil corporation Hybra-Tech goes to Chernobyl to buy some barrels of toxic waste. This waste will allow him to to create and experiment with zombies. When a teenager has an accident with his motorcycle and vanishes, his friends, lead by Charles’ nephew, discover that he was taken to Hybra-Tech. They break in to Hybra-Tech to find their friend and accidentally release a horde of zombies hungry for brains…

And that’s it in a nutshell. It isn’t the deepest plot (like the films that preceded it, if we are being honest). And it does have more than a whiff of “generic zombie” about it. But it does give the film a reasonable framework to base itself off.

Analysis:

Oh boy, where to begin with this one… First up, the film plays very fast & loose with the series lore. 245-Trioxin is now just Trioxin. But most egregiously, they can now be killed with a bullet to the head. Yes, the writers turned the uniquely indestructible zombies from the first 3 films into basic, bog standard shoot em in the head zombies. This somewhat changes the tone of any confrontations with them, as the protagonists always have a way of surviving, provided they don’t get bitten.

And the acting is, well, poor. It’s Sy-Fy TV Movie level at best (which is appropriate as that is where it received it’s premiere). Wooden, inconsistent, and frankly cringey at times. Each character is little more than a caricature. A cypher there to serve part of the plot, and nothing more. The central issue between Charles and his nephew is clearly an attempt to evoke the father/son dynamic of Part 3, but is so badly played out it doesn’t really add anything to the film at all.

Hell, this film is just plain bad.

OK, some of the zombie make up is pretty damned good, all things considered. But it remains about as generic and bog standard as a zombie film can get.

Conclusion:

Don’t bother with this steaming turd of a film. If it had some decent humour, it might be worth your while. But it doesn’t. It’s a turgid, flaccid mess of a film that tries to trade on the goodwill and franchise name with a few token nods to it’s forebears. But this isn’t even scraping the bottom of the barrel for the franchise, oh no. that is yet to come…