Here’s the hype: “The long-awaited, official continuation of the 1985 punk-horror masterpiece has finally arrived to claim Halloween night. Marketing Macabre is proud to announce, on behalf of DragonFlix, the exclusive streaming and digital release of Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath on October 31, 2026. As a direct feature-film sequel to the beloved original cult classic, the project marks a monumental reunion, bringing the “ROTLD Originals” back in action alongside an unprecedented treasure trove of bonus material. The film stars an incredible powerhouse lineup of original franchise favorites, including Linnea Quigley, Beverly Randolph, Miquel Nunez, John Philbin, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews and Drew Deighan.
Here’s me, pissing on the parade: When I say a movie is a piece of shit, trust me, it’s a real piece of shit.
Look, I love Return of the Living Dead. It’s why zombies eat brains. But this AI-generated sequel makes Rave 2 the Grave look like Dawn of the Dead. It makes the Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition look competent.
You know the AI slop that your parents text you about and ask you if it’s real? Imagine an entire movie of that, all made up of 15-30 second bursts, episodic in nature, just absolute dreck.
Director and writer Richard Driscoll also made The Comic and plenty of cash-in movies. Stuff like Adventures of Mickey Sherlock Mouse & Winnie the Pooh, Conjuring: When the Devil Rides Out, Eldorado (which somehow has Peter O’Toole, Daryl Hannah and Caroline Munro in it), Doctor Sleepless (with Rik Mayall and pre-recorded audio of Christopher Walken), Grindhouse Nightmares, Baba Yaga (a John Wick rip-off with Bai Ling), Once Upon a Time in Hollyweird (in which Tom Sizemore investigates Michael Madsen’s death) and the upcoming Trash’s Revenge: Return of the Living Dead Universe (which doesn’t have Linnea Quigley in it) and Driller Killer 2 (which does have Eric Roberts).
Once Driscoll’s 3D Eldorado (aka Highway to Hell finally hit the light of day, HM Revenue and Customs decided to take a look under the hood. What they found was a tax-shelter masterpiece of pure fiction that put the actual movie to shame. Driscoll claimed his flick cost a staggering £12 million. The taxman’s investigation? They pegged the real budget at a meager £750,000. To pocket a cool £1.5 million in VAT refunds for cash the production never actually spent, Driscoll turned the film’s payroll into a legendary paper trail of phantom Hollywood paydays.
Driscoll claimed that he paid David Carradine over £400,000 for 13 days of shooting. The issue? The dates on the invoices were two weeks after Carradine had already died. All of Hannah’s scenes were shot in Los Angeles, but he charged travel expenses, and inflated Rik Mayall’s pay by 800%.
By June 2013, the law caught up with him. Driscoll was found guilty of a £1.5 million VAT fraud involving cooked books on Eldorado, alongside two other micro-budget oddities, Watchmen of Hellgate and Back2Hell. He dodged a conviction on conspiring to claim £2 million in film tax credits, but the judge still handed him three years in the slammer. Now, he frequently flies under the radar using pseudonyms like Steven Craine and Chris Newman.
If he were Italian and named Bruno Mattei, I’d love him.
He isn’t, and he’s not.
This is not the movie where you may have seen Tarman drag a Christmas tree. Steve Wolsh of Living Dead Media will direct that. Living Dead Media (LDM) first slapped the movie’s original 1985 cast with a lawsuit, claiming the actors were messing with their business operations. That case quietly died and got dismissed. Then the cast—operating as ROTLD Originals—struck back, suing LDM to stop them from slapping their faces on unlicensed merch without permission or pay. Naturally, LDM counter-sued, turning a battle over 80s punk-zombie likeness rights into a total courtroom free-for-all.
Anyways, this is, charitably, a movie.
Linnea Quigley, John A. Russo and Beverly Randolph are all listed in the credits as producers. I wonder what Linnea thought when she saw the AI version of her, which looks like someone in a white body stocking, wearing a Spirit Store or Temu Joker mask, being defeated with a net and shoved in a barrel or a bucket that keeps changing size before a long sequence of people tightening the screws to close it.
The words Romero and Louisville get pronounced in all kinds of ways; the original Night of the Living Dead gets colorized all over again, somehow 1986 has podcasters, scenes feel like you’re watching someone play video games badly, and all of Tarman’s appearances are either taken directly from the first movie or AI-generated junk.
There’s also no real music on the soundtrack, a major part of the original.
I’m not shocked Russo has his name on this; I just figured he’d skip the middleman and push this piece of shit out himself. And I like John Russo!
I’m shaking my head. This movie somehow has defeated every other so-called bad movie of all time. It isn’t just horrible. It’s fucking painful. I get that people are going to use AI in some ways, but in my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d see a movie this driven by a machine from another planet, a chained up alien god that everyone is using to make their work easier because their bosses tell them to use it. This movie probably drained an ocean and for what?
I don’t think I could hate a movie more.
Don’t pay for this. In fact, don’t even watch this YouTube link for free.
