Dead and the Damned II, The (DVD)
Starring Robert Tweten, Iren Levy, John J. Welsh
Directed by Rene Perez
Distributed by Inception
After the debacle that was the first The Dead and the Damned, I really couldn’t have had a care in the world if a sequel were to ever breathe life, and after receiving word that there indeed was a second coming in the works from director Rene Perez, there was an overwhelming sense of “here we go again” flashing through my thick skull like a neon beacon in the night. Originally titled The Dead the Damned and the Darkness, it was then whittled down to just having a “II” stuck at the end of the original title – so without any further pointless info, on with the dissection.
Overall, this (surprisingly) wasn’t a half-bad watch… wasn’t a half-good watch either, but even though I expected this film to stink to high hell, there was a sense of abandonment from the first go-around, and that I believe was the sticking point to its mild success. Whereas the first movie dealt with the old West and outlaw zombies, we now have a progression hundreds of years into the future, and a full-blown apocalypse is on our hands.
Lt. Colonel Sawyer (Robert Tweten) has a very simple mission: provide a proper burial for his family at sea. However, the issue is that he’s got to make it across hundreds of miles that contain armies of the undead. Outfitted with a hi-tech body armor setup and the accuracy of a certifiable marksman, he encounters a mute female survivor named Stephanie (Iren Levy), who luckily hasn’t been infected with the virus that turns the living into a flesh-craving lunatic but is now marked by the remaining male survivors as a potential breeding target (much like 28 Days Later).
Sawyer’s mission has taken on a whole new emphasis as his protection of the lone female at times seems to outweigh the interment of his own loved ones. So there you have it – laid out on a cardboard platter for you: no muss, no fuss. I’d love to offer some more along the lines of intriguing plot twists and character reformation, but the end result is a zombie shoot-out that looks like one of the multitudes you could check out on Syfy any old day of the week.
Not that it’s a complete loss. Some of the performances are decent for a low-budget film, and the production looks a little better than something shot on a backstage set. There’s a nice splashing of gore to wet the audience, and if you’re able to forgive some shoddy costuming (many of the zombie looks are masks with BAD cover-ups on the seams), then there’s a passable ministration to the film.
While no real connection between the first and second movie exists (there’s a short explanation near the movie’s close), if you’re simply willing to accept this as another run-of-the-mill zombie shoot-em-up, you should give it a go. But don’t expect to reap a bountiful array of rewards from it as you’d most likely be damned.
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