Review: Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath – Yep, It’s a Turd

Rating: 0/5 Stars

There are bad movies. There are spectacularly bad movies. There are movies so profoundly misguided that their very existence makes you question whether the people responsible have ever actually seen a motion picture before.

And then there’s Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I want to make something abundantly clear before we go any further. This is not an anti-AI review. I recognize that artificial intelligence has the potential to be a valuable filmmaking tool. Like any technology, its usefulness depends entirely on the person wielding it.

Unfortunately, writer/director Richard Driscoll has apparently decided to demonstrate what happens when you hand someone an entire technological toolbox without first establishing whether they know what a hammer is.

Because Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath isn’t simply a bad AI movie.

It’s a bad movie. Period.

The writing is terrible. The storytelling is nonexistent. The editing feels like an afterthought. The sound design suggests someone accidentally unplugged half the equipment and decided nobody would notice.

And the direction?

Well, we’ll get to that.

1984 Was Apparently the Fucking Future

The original The Return of the Living Dead was released in 1985, with its events taking place on July 3, 1984. That distinction is important because Aftermath appears to believe that 1984 was a magical period in American history when technology, fashion, and the laws of linear time were entirely optional.

Military equipment looks like something developed for a futuristic science-fiction franchise. Vehicles seem to have wandered in from whichever decade the AI happened to be hallucinating. Clothing ranges from the early 1990s to the 2000s to whatever somebody wore to Walmart last Thursday.

Body cameras? Sure!

Advanced infrared technology? Absolutely!

Military hardware that looks more sophisticated than what we have today? Fuck it, why not?

Apparently, July 3, 1984, was an extraordinary day. Not only were the dead returning to life, but somebody had apparently invented technology decades ahead of schedule.

I kept expecting Marty McFly to pull up in the DeLorean, look around, and say, “Nope. This timeline is fucked.”

And here’s the thing: these aren’t simply the occasional AI inconsistencies that slip through the cracks. They’re everywhere. The film has absolutely no interest in maintaining the illusion of a specific period.

Continuity isn’t merely broken here. Continuity has been dragged into an alley, beaten senseless, and left for the zombies.

Ninety Minutes of Random Shit Happening

The first half of Aftermath unfolds primarily through what appears to be television news coverage of the unfolding zombie catastrophe.

We get news reports. Station identification graphics. Random footage. More news reports. Military activity. More random footage.

It’s less a movie than a collection of video clips someone accidentally downloaded while searching for “zombie apocalypse 1984 cool stuff.”

There is no discernible dramatic structure. No meaningful escalation. No compelling characters guiding us through the chaos.

Just stuff.

Stuff happens. Then other stuff happens. Then something completely unrelated happens, presumably because the AI thought it looked bitchin’.

Sometimes zombies fall down for absolutely no discernible reason. Sometimes people get shot. Sometimes people are shooting each other. Occasionally, someone appears to be shooting at a zombie, although whether that zombie is actually the intended target is anybody’s guess.

It’s like watching a war movie where the soldiers, the enemy, and the director all have completely different understandings of which war they’re fighting.

At some point, I began to suspect Driscoll had entered two or three sentences into an AI video generator, watched whatever came out, and decided that editing was a problem best left to future generations.

And I genuinely cannot understand how anyone could watch this material and conclude that it was ready for public consumption.

There are shots that serve no purpose. Sequences that seem to begin and end arbitrarily. Visuals that have absolutely no relationship to the material surrounding them.

It feels unfinished because it is unfinished in virtually every meaningful artistic sense.

And that’s what makes this especially frustrating.

AI didn’t make these editorial decisions.

A human being did.

Somewhere along the line, someone had to look at this collection of digital nonsense and say, “Yep. That’s a movie.”

Everybody Is Dave

About halfway through this cinematic root canal, Aftermath suddenly remembers that movies traditionally contain characters.

So we finally begin encountering people who appear to have some connection to the original Return of the Living Dead.

And believe it or not, this is probably the least terrible portion of the experience.

Notice that I didn’t say good.

Good is not a word we’re going to be using much here.

Unfortunately, characterization remains something of a foreign concept. People appear. People disappear. People speak without establishing anything remotely resembling a personality, motivation, or reason to exist.

Many of them might as well be unnamed.

So I named them myself.

Dave.

Every single one of them.

There’s Military Dave. News Dave. Zombie Dave. Confused Dave. Dave Who Might Have Been Another Dave Five Minutes Ago.

At least I think they’re different Daves.

Honestly, with the way the characters look, behave, and occasionally seem to change from shot to shot, I couldn’t be certain.

At one point, I genuinely thought I was watching Multiplicity with Michael Keaton.

Except Multiplicity had the good sense to establish that all those Michael Keatons were supposed to be the same guy.

Here, it’s like someone accidentally cloned Dave forty-seven times, forgot which Dave was which, and then gave all the Daves slightly different facial features just to fuck with the audience.

If this thing were presented in pan-and-scan, the constant switching between Daves would probably give somebody a coronary.

Dave enters from the left. Dave exits from the right. Dave is suddenly standing behind Dave. Dave might actually be a zombie. Dave may have been shot three scenes ago, but apparently Dave is feeling much better now.

I don’t know.

Nobody knows.

Not even Dave.

It’s a movie full of Daves.

And somehow, not one of them has anything interesting to say.

The Bridges of Louisville, Kentucky: A Zombie Romance

Let’s discuss something else that’s almost criminally absent from this alleged Return of the Living Dead sequel.

Gore.

Where the fuck is it?

The original film gave us rotting corpses, exposed brains, dismembered bodies, practical effects, and zombies that genuinely looked like they had crawled out of the grave.

Aftermath gives us what appears to be a series of increasingly aggressive make-out sessions.

Seriously.

At some point, the zombies seem to abandon the whole biting-and-devouring-human-flesh routine in favor of some very enthusiastic deep kissing.

I started wondering whether I’d accidentally switched over to The Bridges of Madison County.

Except this is The Bridges of Louisville, Kentucky.

A Nicholas Sparks production of Return of the Living Dead.

Maybe the zombies aren’t hungry. Maybe they’re just lonely. Maybe they’re misunderstood creatures looking for a little tenderness in a world that has unfairly judged their dietary preferences.

Perhaps Nicholas Sparks should write the next installment.

The Notebook 2: I Remember Your Brains.

“Two souls. One forbidden love. And a military chemical that makes commitment literally eternal.”

Instead of tearing people apart, the zombies seem to be engaging in some rather heavy petting.

Sure, there’s a little blood here and there, but half the time it looks like somebody just gave somebody else a particularly enthusiastic tug on the lip.

I’m not sure these people are being eaten.

I think they’re getting frisky.

And the lack of convincing gore is especially baffling considering the franchise we’re dealing with.

This is Return of the Living Dead.

The movie that gave us Tarman.

The movie that made brain-eating zombies a cultural phenomenon.

The movie that embraced grotesque practical effects and gleefully disgusting humor.

And now we’re apparently supposed to be satisfied with digital zombies awkwardly French-kissing Dave.

Cracker Barrel Tarman Has Entered the Chat

Oh, and speaking of Tarman.

Yes, we actually get something resembling the franchise’s most iconic zombie.

Or at least what I assume Richard Driscoll thinks Tarman should look like.

And I genuinely don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or start looking for a rocking chair and some country-fried steak.

Because this version of Tarman looks and moves like one of those little wooden collapsing toys you used to find at gift shops.

You know the ones.

The little figures held together with strings. You push a button underneath the base, the tension releases, and the whole thing collapses into a pile of disconnected limbs. Let go of the button, and suddenly the little bastard springs back to attention.

That’s Tarman.

That’s what we’ve got.

At one point, he falls over and his head sort of twists around in a way that suggests someone pushed the button on the bottom of his wooden platform.

I half expected a little price tag to appear.

$12.99. Available at Cracker Barrel. Batteries not included.

This isn’t the horrifying, dripping, skeletal nightmare that terrified audiences in 1985.

This is Cracker Barrel Tarman.

The kind of thing you’d buy on a road trip, put on your dashboard, and occasionally poke while waiting for your biscuits.

And the truly tragic part is that the original Tarman was accomplished with practical effects more than forty years ago.

Forty. Years.

Yet somehow, with access to technology that can generate virtually any visual imaginable, we’ve ended up with a zombie that looks like it came free with a children’s breakfast.

At this point, I wasn’t even angry anymore.

I was hungry.

And honestly, a plate of chicken and dumplings would have provided considerably more entertainment than this movie.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Ask What the Fuck Is Going On

Just when you think Aftermath has exhausted every conceivable way to confuse its audience, it apparently decides that what this zombie movie really needs is a subplot involving outer space.

Yes.

Space.

But before we get there, we need to talk about Trash.

Linnea Quigley’s iconic character from the original film actually makes an appearance here in zombified form.

Well, technically, she makes a couple of appearances.

In the same fucking shot.

I’m not kidding.

There are apparently enough versions of zombie Trash wandering around that I started wondering whether she had also enrolled in the Dave cloning program.

And what does the movie do with this iconic character?

It literally stuffs her into one of those familiar military containment drums.

Stuffed.

Like somebody trying to cram an oversized sleeping bag back into its original packaging.

And the visual design?

Imagine somebody typing the following into an AI generator:

“Take this iconic horror character, search Spirit Halloween’s website, find the absolute worst clown mask available, digitize it, and make sure it looks like complete shit.”

Generate.

Rinse.

Fucking repeat.

Because that’s about the level of visual sophistication we’re dealing with.

And somehow, the movie isn’t finished abusing the franchise’s mythology.

Nope.

Now we’re dealing with a fucking space shuttle.

A SPACE SHUTTLE.

There’s also something that looks vaguely like an android wandered over from Prometheus, although explaining its significance would apparently require the film to have some idea what it’s doing.

Which it doesn’t.

I cannot adequately describe the experience of watching a movie that has already abandoned continuity, pacing, characterization, and logic suddenly decide that its next logical destination is low Earth orbit.

It’s like watching someone assemble a jigsaw puzzle using pieces from six different boxes, discover that none of them fit, and then announce that the completed picture is actually a spaceship.

At this point, I stopped asking questions.

I simply accepted that Dave was probably an astronaut now.

And somewhere on Earth, Cracker Barrel Tarman was probably waiting for his biscuits.

The Sound of Silence. Literally.

Let’s talk about the sound design.

Or, more accurately, the astonishing absence of it.

There are moments in Aftermath when characters move their mouths and absolutely nothing comes out.

Not a whisper.

Not a word.

Nothing.

There are movements without accompanying sound effects. Sequences that feel as though entire audio tracks have gone missing. Dialogue that sounds disconnected from the characters supposedly delivering it.

And then there’s the synthetic vocal delivery, which frequently makes the characters sound less like human beings and more like malfunctioning GPS units attempting to communicate from beyond the grave.

I have spent years working in audio production and post-production, and I can tell you that sound is not some optional decorative element you sprinkle over a movie when you have a few minutes left before dinner.

Sound creates space. It establishes perspective. It communicates emotion, tension, and physical reality.

Here, it mostly communicates that someone couldn’t be bothered.

I’ve heard more convincing sound design from a malfunctioning refrigerator.

And the refrigerator had better dramatic timing.

The Original Cast Deserved Better

Now we get to the part that makes this entire debacle considerably less funny.

The controversy surrounding Aftermath isn’t limited to angry fans or people who dislike AI-generated filmmaking.

It involves performers associated with the original film.

Linnea Quigley and Beverly Randolph, who played Trash and Tina in Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 classic, have publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the project and how it evolved.

According to their November 5 interview with The Caffeinated Horror Dude, the project originally involved a very different concept called Trash’s Revenge, reportedly envisioned as a mixture of Sunset Boulevard and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Which, frankly, sounds infinitely more interesting than whatever the hell this is.

Quigley says she warned Driscoll against using AI and withdrew before filming her scenes after learning about its extensive use.

Randolph says she filmed for three days, including material involving original cast member Thom Mathews, but was shocked by how her performance appeared and sounded in the finished production. She has publicly requested that her likeness be removed.

That’s not a minor creative disagreement.

That’s a serious concern about performers’ expectations and how their recorded performances and likenesses are used.

And it raises a question that extends well beyond this particular movie.

When does a filmmaker’s enthusiasm for new technology begin to override their responsibility to the people whose work and identities are involved?

The precise contractual permissions and franchise rights remain unclear from the publicly available accounts. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But when performers associated with your movie are publicly distancing themselves from the finished product, perhaps it’s worth considering whether something went catastrophically wrong.

Other names associated with the project include Miguel A. Núñez Jr., John Philbin, and John A. Russo, among others.

The involvement of recognizable names doesn’t make the finished movie any more coherent.

It simply makes the entire situation more depressing.

Related reporting: iHorror: Return of the Living Dead Stars Want Out of AI Aftermath.

This Is What Happens When You Confuse Having Tools With Having Talent

Here’s where I probably sound like an angry filmmaker.

Good.

Because I am.

I’ve spent enough time making movies, editing footage, working through post-production, and struggling with the realities of independent filmmaking to recognize how much effort goes into creating even a modestly successful motion picture.

And I know how difficult it is to secure financing.

That’s what makes something like Aftermath so frustrating.

There are extraordinarily talented filmmakers out there who cannot get their projects funded. People who understand storytelling, editing, visual composition, sound, performance, and the thousand other things that go into creating a movie.

And then you encounter something like this.

A feature-length production that appears to have mistaken the ability to generate images for the ability to tell a story.

AI can produce a zombie.

It cannot automatically make that zombie frightening.

It can generate a military installation.

It cannot automatically make that installation believable.

It can produce the appearance of an actor delivering dialogue.

It cannot guarantee that the dialogue is meaningful, the performance is compelling, or the scene serves any purpose.

Those responsibilities still belong to the filmmaker.

And Aftermath fails at virtually every one of them.

Richard, I don’t doubt that you love movies.

But loving movies and knowing how to make them are two very different things.

Maybe the next project should be a little smaller. Something manageable. Something with an actual screenplay, defined characters, and an editor who is permitted to say no.

Or maybe just buy a ticket to the theater.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying movies without making another one.

A Triathlon of Human Suffering

I want to stress how difficult this movie was to finish.

Not because it’s emotionally challenging.

Not because it’s intellectually demanding.

Not because it’s some uncompromising experimental work that requires the audience to confront uncomfortable truths.

No.

It’s because watching Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath feels like being trapped in a waiting room where someone has replaced all the magazines with AI-generated pictures of people who have seven fingers.

I had to break it into multiple viewing sessions.

Multiple.

For a movie that’s roughly an hour and a half long.

I’ve sat through sprawling historical epics with less difficulty.

And I would strongly advise against watching this thing if you’re already feeling under the weather.

Seriously.

If you have a fever, stay the fuck away from Aftermath.

I genuinely believe there are three possible outcomes.

First, the movie might actually kill you. Not because it’s frightening, but because your immune system will simply decide it has suffered enough and clock out.

Second, you might develop a fractured personality. One personality will hate the movie, while the other will hate it even fucking more.

And third, you might just never get better.

Imagine explaining that to your doctor.

“Well, the flu was clearing up, but then I watched Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath, and now I keep seeing Dave.”

There is probably a very real possibility that this movie could become a chronic illness.

At approximately the one-hour mark, I experienced what I can only describe as missing time.

I don’t know whether I fell asleep, briefly lost consciousness, or was abducted by extraterrestrials who were also trying to escape the movie.

Whatever happened, I returned to discover that the film was still going.

And Dave was still there.

Fucking Dave.

Final Verdict: 0/5 Stars

The Return of the Living Dead is one of the great horror comedies of the 1980s because it understands exactly what it wants to be.

It’s funny, disgusting, energetic, anarchic, and full of memorable characters. Its effects, performances, music, and direction all contribute to a wonderfully cohesive piece of cinematic chaos.

Aftermath seems to believe that chaos simply means throwing random shit at the screen until the running time reaches feature length.

It doesn’t.

The original film’s chaos was carefully constructed.

This film’s chaos feels like nobody bothered constructing anything.

And that is the fundamental difference.

I’m not giving Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath zero stars because it uses artificial intelligence.

I’m giving it zero stars because it’s badly written, incompetently assembled, visually inconsistent, narratively incoherent, technically unfinished, almost entirely devoid of gore, and missing virtually every quality that makes a movie worth watching.

AI is not the villain here.

The absence of filmmaking is.

If there’s one thing Aftermath demonstrates, it’s that the ability to create moving images doesn’t automatically make someone a filmmaker.

And the ability to generate ninety minutes of content doesn’t mean you’ve made ninety minutes of cinema.

Richard Driscoll has managed to make a zombie movie that somehow feels less alive than the corpses populating it.

And that, my friends, is quite an accomplishment.

0 out of 5 stars.

Yep.

It’s a turd.

And unlike the zombies in the original film, this is one thing I sincerely hope never comes back.

Not even Dave.

Not even Cracker Barrel Tarman.

Although I could really go for some biscuits right about now.