Plot
When the last of the Trioxyin 5 barrels are discovered in
the attic of his recently-deceased uncle, Julian takes it to his friend,
Cody, at the college science lab for further examination. Cody discovers
that the toxin causes an ecstasy-like effect on the user and decides to cash
in by selling the drug to a local dealer for distribution. What he doesn't
realise is that prolonged exposure to the toxin turns people into zombies
and the Halloween party is going to turn into a night they will never
forget.
Review
Made at the same time as the previous installment,
Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave is pretty much a
continuation of that film from every point of view - plot, characters,
dialogue, effects, etc. The surviving characters all return but for some
unknown reason, they never mention anything that happened to them. They
don't recognise zombies when they see them. They don't know how to kill
them. Even the main character, Julian, looks upset at the news of his
uncle's death - despite the fact he tried to kill them all and turn them
into zombies in the last one! I don't honestly see the point of bringing
these characters back if you're not going to use them as reference to the previous
film. So what we're left with is basically another reboot of the series,
only this is one boot that has worn out quickly.
I don't even know where to begin without repeating myself from the last
review. Basically if you liked
Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis then you could get away with
this one. If you weren't overly keen on it, then you're not going to like
this one. There's just not a lot of difference between the two. The film is
still unbelievably silly in terms of the characters, the script and the
plot. Only this time, even the last ounces of seriousness have been whittled
away, leaving bad jokes and weak comic moments to overrun and turn the thing
into some juvenile mess. American Pie meets Night of the Living
Dead if you like. The original trilogy managed this mix of comedy and
silliness and also managed to be pretty nasty and scary at times so why the
difference? It's clear that very few of the crew saw the original,
especially the writers. They basically re-write the rules of this series,
meaning that the zombies are no longer indestructible but can be taken out
with bullets or, in the case of the last film, a flurry of hard-hitting
right hands.
The zombies still have the habit of biting
skulls from behind instead of of gouging necks or just plain old
limb-ripping. I wondered in my previous film whether or not the effects guys
actually knew any other method of having zombies attack their victims and I
seem to have been proven right. Again the skull-attack is over-done and by
the time the fifth or sixth one happens, you'll yawn and look at your watch
in disgust. The zombies themselves look even worse than before, sometimes
walking slowly and other times attempting to the do the 100m. The only
purpose this serves is for lazy screen writers to build certain scenes in
different ways and not even attempting to explain the difference. Trying to
hide from incoming zombies by opening a locked door? Well it's no good if
the zombies run towards you - they have to slowly amble their way to you to
build tension. It's stupid and insulting at times. Have these writers never
seen the original or the sequels? Actually one of them has. In a
mildly amusing nod to the original, the "Tar Man" zombie from the canister
makes an appearance. Unfortunately it's a little too pointless to be worth
watching for. The zombies are background characters for most of the film
too, a crime when you're a zombie film! It's only the finale at the rave
where the zombies finally get to do some damage.
The "comedic" Romanian secret agents are a lame
addition to the film. They're not funny despite repeated attempts to turn
them into bumbling numbskulls. They have a ropey grasp of English at best so
even their vocabulary is butchered worse than the script surely intended.
Surely a favour to someone if I ever saw one! The actors reprising their
roles from the last one manage to be even more annoying than before, with
grinning Peter Coyote hamming it up even more in his brief cameo at the
beginning. As I said earlier, it's pointless bringing some of them back when
they don't out their experience to good use. The new additions are all dodgy
Eastern Europeans too. Enough with filming abroad! I'm sick of it already!
If you're going to film abroad, please make sure the cast can speak English
and speak it fluently. Even though they take up the "no effort required"
roles of stoners, sluts, etc. it would still be nice to understand what they
were saying and feel a bit of attachment to the main characters before their
eventual doom.
Verdict
Return of the Living Dead 5:
Rave to the Grave is worse than the previous one by a long way. To me
these two sequels never felt like I was watching a continuation of the
series. Like the modern Hellraiser films, it's almost like some
random zombie films got made and then were slapped with the Return of the
Living Dead tag to sell some more copies. Formulaic, dreary and
pointless spring to mind when I think of this film.
