Available on 4K and Blu-ray August 13th, 2024
Following on the footsteps of Demons (1985), this sequel takes place, mostly, in an apartment building where a woman celebrates her birthday and where the zombies are coming by way of television this time.
Written by Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava, Franco Ferrini, and Dardano Sacchetti, and directed by Lamberto Bava, this sequel moves to a building that is different from a cinema with characters who are celebrating (in most cases) and where the mean of infection is no longer a film on a big screen, but television screens. Of course, there is a side group again that finds themselves mixed up into it all to bring in more fodder for the zombies. The story here is alright. The first is definitely superior, but this isn’t bad and does feel like it is in the same universe, expanding the reach of the zombies and making them more a global issue.
The cast here sees Bobby Rhodes come back and steal a few scenes, Coralina Cataldi- Tassoni who is lovely as usual here, Asia Argento who is quite young here and doing decent work, and a cast of folks only fans of Italian cinema will recognize. The cast here feels a bit more generic, but so do the characters so it makes some sense. This is film made to bring zombie mayhem to the screen and to follow up on the success of the first, so the acting works, but once again, it’s not exactly award season material. It doesn’t fully matter though as many are just there to be victims or be zombies.
The score by Simon Boswell works here, but it does make one miss the work of Simoneti on the first film. Boswell’s work is good, it’s just not quite the same. Same thing for the special effects, they work, but they are not exactly the best of the best. There is some grossness here and some puss and blood and guts and all that gooey goodness, but it feels less than the first in terms of quality of the effects or like something is missing.
This new release on 4K looks good and just like the first film’s new 4K release, it looks as good as it’s going to get here as the source material offers some limitations based on filming style, lighting, and sound recording. Things do look decent and sound decent though. What is going to call to fans here is the insane number of extras on this release. The new subtitles are once again greatly appreciated, but the main items here are the special features that include a piece on New Blood of Italian Horror with Sergio Stivaletti, a piece with Lamberto Bava about the sequel here, a feature called Creating Creature Carnage with Stivaletti again, an interview with Luigi Cozzi about Bava. These extras here almost feel like they belong on box set of the two films as they include a lot about the first film in them. Overall, the extras on this release are solid, giving the Italian zombie sequel more than anyone would expect.