Return of the Living Dead
My thoughts
The Return of the Living Dead is about some workers at a medical supply warehouse burning a reanimated corpse, and the consequences of their actions. The consequences being zombies rising from the grave, and having to survive a horde that wants to eat their brains.
The plot is okay. The business owner not alerting authorities got on my nerves but it makes sense. It serves the story well enough. Which follows a standard classic zombie story: zombies arrive, survivors fight them off and try to survive, and then authorities arrive and destroy everything. It’s nothing to boast about, but it’s still a good story just expect more brain eating than character development.
The beginning of the movie has my favorite trope, lying to the audience. It claims that everything was based on real events, and they double down with Frank talking to Freddy claiming Night of the Living Dead was based on a true story. I found it to have some great jokes, like on the eye chart which claims that Frank’s boss Burt is a slave driving bastard. Now that I talked about my favorite thing about it I’ll talk about my least favorite thing. Trash is an weird character, and in a graveyard she decides to strip and get a little frisky with her boyfriend Suicide.
The characters are pretty good most of the time. The punk’s names are a bit peculiar, like an edgy 8 year old was asked to name something. They have names like Spider, Trash, and suicide. Some are a bit odd like Trash and Suicide, Trash strips in a graveyard and talks about wanting to be eaten by old men, she than gets reanimated and runs around very pale for some reason. The characters (besides some outliers) are well written and the actors in general did a great job. With zombies, the most recognizable one is Tarman who is a terrifying image and a horrific fella.
Realism
In zombie media it's kinda ridiculous to look for something to be realistic, so I am judging it by asking “is it consistent with the rules in the film?” Zombie media often struggles with this by having the zombies be morons than capable of planning ambushes and tool usage. Return of the Living Dead does not have this problem. They are shown to be extremely intelligent with Tarman figuring out how to use a winch and pull off a door that Tina was hiding behind. They are shown to be able to communicate when using the radio to call more paramedics to ambush. Their strength and durability is always consistent. A nice touch is that in any scene that shows them attacking someone they are focusing on biting their skull.
The lovely Tarman
Summary
The story follows a group of people in Louisville, Kentucky. It starts out as two groups with Freddy and Frank working in a medical supply warehouse. Frank tells Freddy about how Night of the Living Dead was based on a true story and shows him a barrel containing the zombie. This wasn’t the best idea as it would lead to the barrel being opened and releasing a gas that reanimates the dead. They panic and get the idea to call their boss Burt who decides to go to the crematorium. They would go on to burn it releasing a gas that would rain down and reanimate anything it touched. The other group was waiting for Freddy to get off work and included some punk characters like Trash and my personal favorite, Spider. The punks also brought some of their very much not punk friends, Tina and Chuck. They throw a party in a graveyard, which is ruined by the undead rising from their graves. The group goes to the warehouse where they see the great Tarman and are then scared into running off and then split up in the cemetery. Half go back to the warehouse and the other half go into the crematorium. The crematorium half meet up with Freddy and watch as any paramedics or cops that enter the area are ambushed by zombies. The zombies are extremely intelligent, setting up ambushes to get people out of their vehicle. Eventually Burt and Spider escape and get into the patrol car but crash and have to run into the warehouse. They decide to call the army who then nuke the town.