Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)

aka Return of the Living Dead 4

Directed by Ellory Elkayem
Written by William Butler and Aaron Strongoni
Starring
- Aimee-Lynn Chadwick
- Cory Hardrict
- John Keefe
- Jana Kramer
- Peter Coyote

The fourth entry in a franchise which seems dedicated to proving the application of the law of diminishing returns (ouch — sorry), Necropolis takes a sufficient budget, good production values, some choice location opportunities and even a semi-good cast and squanders them in the service of story full of cliches, missed opportunities, and convenient character stupidity. It’s not a perfectly horrendous movie — it may even be rewatchable, though not by me — but almost every scene is marred by the presence of some dunderheaded error that someone consciously decided should be a part of this movie.

Because this is a Return of the Living Dead movie, and because this franchise is tied together out of a forest of similar zombie movies by a single thread, we leap upon that thread immediately: Trioxin! Yes, that dastardly chemical substance is still around, lurking in innocent-looking metal barrels, just waiting for a chance to bring the dead back to their feet in search of brains. In this instance, the last six extant containers of Trioxin are being stored in the last place anyone would look: My sock drawer. No, sorry, they’re being kept in Chernobyl, a location made convenient by the fact that the production actually shot the Chernobyl scenes in Chernobyl. Against a backdrop of decades-abandoned Soviet highrises and playground equipment (excuse me, Soviet playground equipment), a black car passes through checkpoints toward the center of the quarantined zone, the reactor itself. In the car are three Ukrainian locals, and a lone American, Charles, played by Peter Coyote.

Ah, Peter Coyote. He’s not the star, but he’s in the movie enough for anyone watching to be very certain he did not want to be in this movie, playing the role of the single recognizable face otherwise surrounded by unknown American actors and a grundle of Romanian extras. In every scene, he grimaces like a man smelling the egg salad sandwich that somebody had two hours before (if you know what I mean), and his line delivery says, more loudly than the words he speaks, “I will say my line because they will pay me for doing so.”

He and his handlers approach the reactor and find the six barrels of Trioxin which Charles plans to spirit out of the country for personal/corporate/nongovernmental use. (No word on how he plans to get all six barrels transported in the black sedan he came in — roomy for four adults, yes, but not for four adults plus six oil barrels.) And because Trioxin is nasty and post-Soviet maintenance is shoddy, one of the barrels has tipped over and leaked just a bit, and the Ukrainian local who tips is back up gets some on his fingers, and pretty soon — “Braaaaaiiins!”

Now, from here on out the rest of the movie will be set in “America” (as doubled by Romania), so let’s just get something out of the way: This movie is subtitled “Necropolis.” That’s Latin for “city of the dead.” What’s the single most deserving location on Planet Earth for the label “necropolis”? Chernobyl. And where is the story leaving now? Chernobyl. From here on out, there will be nothing in the story told or the locations used in Necropolis that is in any way a necropolis. I remember when this movie was first in production, the producers were all giddy in the genre fanboy press, proclaiming, “We’re going to be shooting in Chernobyl!” And I, naturally, thought that Chernobyl would make an absolute kick-ass location for a zombie movie. But the only scene shot and set in Chernobyl is one which could have taken place anywhere fairly isolated — an abandoned military base or a warehouse in northern Quebec a decommissioned missile silo. It’s a waste of a primo location that might almost plausibly have poisoned my mind against the rest of the movie, except for the fact that the rest of the movie’s got plenty of poisoning of its own to do.

To wit: We next see a car crash on a dark road in the rain. Where? Who? Don’t know, and as yet, we don’t care; all we know is that a man and a woman lie dead on the asphalt, thrown from their vehicle.

It’s the next scene that explains the previous one, in such a way that the previous scene is rendered unnecessary, when we meet our protagonist, high school senior Julian (Julian Garrison) and his younger brother Jake (Alexandru Geoana), also known as “Pyro” for his habit of making homemade flamethrowers and such. (If you’re going to be in a zombie movie, that’s a much more useful hobby than stamp collecting or internet porn.) Peeved at Pyro for testing his equipment on the coffee table, Julian says, “If Mom and Dad were still alive…” to which Pyro replies, “But they’re not!” I refuse to believe that that particular exchange was ever really good writing, even back when it was first used in some other movie back in the Age of Dinosaurs, and it certainly hasn’t gotten any better for being used by quality-indifferent screenwriters over the years.

Julian and Pyro are now the wards of their Uncle Charlie, whom you may know better as Peter Coyote. Charlie works for Hybra Tech (as did the deceased Mom and Dad), a megalithic corporation which has its hands in everything from food production to world health to industrial applications to zombie cleanup (this is a world in which periodic reanimations of the living dead are a matter of public record). I believe that their corporate motto is, “We one day hope to be as efficiently evil as The Umbrella Corporation.”

And finally, the rest of the main cast, introduced when Julian gets to school:

- galpal Becky (Aimee-Lynn Chadwick), blonde with glasses, kind of a klutz.

- longtime best friend Zeke (Elvin Dandel), always pushing Julian to live more on the edge. Zeke has recently broken up with…

- Katie (Jana Kramer), the uber-hottie for whom Julian may or may not have feelings for. Katie ever-so-conveniently works in the security office at the local Hybra Tech complex after school, because multinationals with hidden agendas often hire high school students for key security positions.

- Cody (Cory Hardrict), who fulfills two separate “ensemble cast” cliches for us: he’s black, AND he’s a hacker.

- And a few other warm bodies (for the time being) whose presence will later be required.

And now, something resembling a plot:

After school that day, Zeke is goading Julian to make a jump on his motorbike, but as he shows off his own mad skillz, Zeke ends up in a poorly-edited crash with a head injury. The ambulance takes him away, but when Julian tries to visit him there, he’s first told by reception that Zeke isn’t in the hospital, and then later by a doctor that Zeke died due to an allergic reaction to painkillers.

However, at almost that same moment, Katie in the Hybra Tech security center sees an ambulance pull in to one of the buildings and unload a body on a stretcher — a body that looks Zeke. Because well-oiled bodysnatching operations run by professionals always parade their guinea pigs past recording videocameras.

But, you ask, couldn’t there be some less-nefarious reason for this switch? Surely you jest. We know without a shadow of a doubt that Uncle Charlie is involved; we’ve already seen him in his Hybra Tech lab (dim, with only low blue lights illuminating it, because Heaven forbid a scientist should want to see clearly the results of his experiments), spraying trioxin gas on a severed arm just to watch it grab for him, and on the body of a dead punk rocker in a tank. And where is the spray coming from? From Chernobyl, of course, but the powers-that-be at Hybra Tech have determined somehow that rather than simply having the trioxin supply close to where it’s being used, the gas is to be piped in through an insane length of conduit, some of which passes along the outside of the building where a couple of homeless guys (Boris Petroff and Constantin Barbulescu) camp. Oh, and the pipe’s got a leak, just so that we can have some zombie bums real soon. As we shall see repeatedly, one of Hybra Tech’s main problem is that it hires all the worst subcontractors.

Anyway. Cody easily hacks into the Hybra Tech website and finds a section in their Medical department labelled “Necropolis,” where Zeke is listed. This begins the Scooby-Doo section of the movie, as the gaggle of friends decides to sneak in themselves and get Zeke out. They cheerily assemble walkie-talkies, rappelling lines, fake ID badges, stun guns, and even some real firepower (it’s the Hispanic kid of the group of friends who brings along a pistol). They study schematics of the building, and then, with Katie in the security office that night cutting the cameras at opportune moments, they sneak in to the complex, through the unguarded underground levels that look like abandoned parking garages. This is where the homeless undead show up, which is the only effect that that leaking pipe will ever have, and this scene is bizarre for two reasons:

1) As soon as the zombie bums start showing up, the kids react with horror and call them “things” — this despite the fact that they simply look like a couple of dirty bums, especially by the poor lighting. (Granted, normal bums don’t moan “Braaaaiiins” all that often, but still.)

2) Both are dispatched by headshots from the Hispanic kid’s pistol. Wait, what? There are only two constants in the Return of the Living Dead movies: one is the trioxin, and the other is that headshots — the zombiekiller of choice in most other movies — don’t work. And lest you think that they’ve changed the unwritten rules for this entry, I remind you that Uncle Charlie was playing with a severed arm which became very animated when exposed to trioxin. So why are we reestablishing that rule of the franchise, only to ignore it for the entire rest of the movie? (Not the the kids ever wise up; they waste plenty of bullets on body shots from here on out. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

The kids are led by Katie into the main building through the Hollywood standard air ducts. (Why is she talking them through every turn on the walkie-talkies, if we already saw them studying the building schematics?) Their endpoint is nothing other than Uncle Charlie’s lab, or rather, the miniature armory connected thereto. They stock up on the armaments, then run into Uncle Charlie himself, who spills much exposition at gunpoint. Bio-weapons! We’re working on bio-weapons here! Also a zombie cloning program — growin’ ‘em dead, as it were! Not only that, but Julian’s mom and dad are still alive after a fashion, and being kept in another part of the complex! (Because Charlie’s got some sort of fetish about using subjects connected directly to him and his family, I guess.)

The good news is that Zeke is still alive and “untreated.” The bad news is that, in order to open doors that Uncle Charlie refuses to open, they shoot some electric keypads. The first time it happens, Katie works desperately in the security room to cut it off before it notifies the police. The second time…

Complete security failure.

Not the electrical or mechanical systems, mind you. Just the security. And that means that chainlink doors holding each of the experimental zombie subjects in the entire wing suddenly fall open, letting scores of zombies in scrubs (haven’t seen that many of those since The Dead Pit) stumble out to look for brains. I’m thinking that the security system subcontractor is another firm that ’s not going to get good ratings on AngiesList.com.

From here, we get to watch zombies — scads and scads of them — overrun the complex, while three separate groups of teenagers try to avoid them: Julian takes two friends to try to find him mom and dad in that other wing, most of the rest of the Scooby gang (the ones that haven’t been chomped yet) try to find a vehicle in the parking garage in which they can escape, and Katie tries to find some way out of the building.

These zombies, by the way, are a very wasteful lot. Their main tactic for attack (except, of course, where the hero is concerned) is to come up behind an individual and bite a chunk of hair, skull and brain out of the back of the head. But they never stop to eat the rest of that individual’s brain; they simply go looking for yet more fresh brains. You overprivileged American zombies (as played by Romanian extras)! Don’t you know that there are zombies starving in Ethiopia?

Speaking of the Romanian extras, these guys really needed some remedial training before being put in front of the camera. Every time someone peppers their bodies with automatic weapons fire, they do that little “bullet dance” which really only makes sense for living targets, and anyway their movements rarely match up with the timing or order of bullet hits. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the movie weren’t edited to showcase how poorly the zombies catch their bullets. And don’t even get me started on the “pro wrestling with the dead” scene.

There is plenty of frantic running around, with Julian finding out that his parents are experiment “ZomBorg”-style warriors, and various people getting bitten, and eventually there are only a couple of the teens left, and yada yada yada. If anything surprises you here, it will only be how predictable it is; you would assume that the writers wouldn’t grab for the easiest cliche or story shortcut every time, right? That’s what you get for having faith in people. Right down to the “shocker” at the end, everything seems like a movie made on autopilot.