There were so many directions that the RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD franchise could have gone after PART 2 (which threw away much of the mythology established in the first film) and PART III (which was a mixture of Romeo & Juliet and an Italian gore-fest) but instead with RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD: NECROPOLIS we are subjected to inane teenagers in one of the most under-developed messes in recent memory.
NECROPOLIS follows a group of teens who break into a research facility to save a friend of theirs who has been secretly kidnapped in order to do research on him. Peter Coyote plays a research scientist who has uncovered the last remaining barrels of Trioxin gas, which brought the dead back to life in the previous films. He’s using it to experiment on both the dead and the living in order to create bio-weapons, among other things. When one of the teenagers become part of the experiences his friends band together to break him out but instead unleash all the living dead held in the facility.
The biggest problem with the movie is the screenplay by William Butler and Aaron Strongoni which has every science gone mad film of the ‘50s through the ‘60s with no originality in sight nor any logic to why characters and situations are so inadequately done. In a research facility that does so much illegal activities why is there no decent security? Why are the living dead even being kept considering that they aren’t even of use to the facility? Why hasn’t anyone, before now, wizened up all the people disappearing without any bodies to be buried? Why would a research facility hire a high school student for security? This just scratches the surface on what dumb things shouldn’t be in a modern day horror film. They could’ve gotten away with it twenty years ago when no one knew any better but any savvy audiences today could see through this film.
There are a handful of gore sequences but they all come off as PG since these zombies just take a nibble out of a person’s brain rather then go for the jugular. I guess this they did this to save on the effects budget. They could have just saved everyone the wasted time and money by not producing this film in the first place.
NECROPOLIS follows a group of teens who break into a research facility to save a friend of theirs who has been secretly kidnapped in order to do research on him. Peter Coyote plays a research scientist who has uncovered the last remaining barrels of Trioxin gas, which brought the dead back to life in the previous films. He’s using it to experiment on both the dead and the living in order to create bio-weapons, among other things. When one of the teenagers become part of the experiences his friends band together to break him out but instead unleash all the living dead held in the facility.
The biggest problem with the movie is the screenplay by William Butler and Aaron Strongoni which has every science gone mad film of the ‘50s through the ‘60s with no originality in sight nor any logic to why characters and situations are so inadequately done. In a research facility that does so much illegal activities why is there no decent security? Why are the living dead even being kept considering that they aren’t even of use to the facility? Why hasn’t anyone, before now, wizened up all the people disappearing without any bodies to be buried? Why would a research facility hire a high school student for security? This just scratches the surface on what dumb things shouldn’t be in a modern day horror film. They could’ve gotten away with it twenty years ago when no one knew any better but any savvy audiences today could see through this film.
There are a handful of gore sequences but they all come off as PG since these zombies just take a nibble out of a person’s brain rather then go for the jugular. I guess this they did this to save on the effects budget. They could have just saved everyone the wasted time and money by not producing this film in the first place.
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