A few moderately decent special effects are probably the best thing on offer in this lacklustre sequel to the classic comedy/horror yarn, in which the non-existent plot serves to vainly attempt to recapture the highlights from the original. For no explainable reason, the stalwart tag-team of James Karen and Thom Mathews are also brought back from the first film, playing different characters, but exactly the same thing happens to them here as it does in the original! Aside from the overwhelming déjà vu, this is a bigger-scope but lacking film, with the overdone comedy a real bore most of the time. Although there are a fair few macabre gags that pay off (the Michael Jackson homage, the severed head scenes, the disintegrating zombies) for the most part this is an irritating film that contains nothing memorable like the original. Even the music is worse.
It's a bog-standard '80s comic horror romp with little brain and even less imagination on offer. The effects of the zombies are decent but the overacting – done by the entire cast now and not just Karen and Mathews – is a really big mistake. In fact there is not one straight character in the film. Just loads of bland teenagers, an annoyingly smart kid, and other extraneous folk who shout and scream a lot. It's pretty embarrassing really. The plot is predictable, the casting instantly forgettable (all long forgotten today, aside from a brief turn by X-FILES star Mitch Pileggi), the jokes just keep getting dumber and dumber. Ignore the bigger budget and heightened effects, the first film in this series is still the one to look out for.
It's a bog-standard '80s comic horror romp with little brain and even less imagination on offer. The effects of the zombies are decent but the overacting – done by the entire cast now and not just Karen and Mathews – is a really big mistake. In fact there is not one straight character in the film. Just loads of bland teenagers, an annoyingly smart kid, and other extraneous folk who shout and scream a lot. It's pretty embarrassing really. The plot is predictable, the casting instantly forgettable (all long forgotten today, aside from a brief turn by X-FILES star Mitch Pileggi), the jokes just keep getting dumber and dumber. Ignore the bigger budget and heightened effects, the first film in this series is still the one to look out for.