Return of the Living Dead 3 -- Brian Yuzna
This barely feels like a Return of the Living Dead movie. With one tweak, getting rid of the 2-4-5 Trioxin, it wouldn't be. Return of the Living Dead 3 is about lovers, Julie and Kurt, who want to be together always except one of them is turning into a zombie. It works in the framework of a Living Dead movie because the zombies can talk and run and think (the first movie is the lone exception to my "no fast zombies" belief). As a tale of these two crazy kids, it's not terrible. Not good, but you really feel bad for Julie as she fights the hunger.
However, the thing that works against this movie is that it aligns itself as part of the Living Dead series. Living Dead 3 features none of the comedy of the first two films. There is no sense of scale (in the first movie, the zombie threat escalates constantly until the dead rise from the earth. It's awesome). Basically five or six people turn and it's all contained in locations that scream "we don't have a budget to work with!" Lastly, it looks like every other movie shot in the '90s: bland and over-lit. I miss the murkiness of the prior movies.
Brian Yuzna has made a career of directing sequels to notable horror movies (this, Re-Animator, Silent Night, Deadly Night), but unlike Beyond Re-Animator which overcomes it's early flaws. Living Dead 3 never really takes off the way it should. It passes the time and has a few neat effects and Julie accessorizes in a most interesting way, but you should just stick with the original.
I watched Mutants ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1146320/ ) the other day, which is the french version of RotLD3, but more realistic and less campy.
ReplyDeleteWarning though, the zombies are more like the infected in 28 Days Later than anything else.