1/5 Everything about this ROTLD sequel went wrong on every level
  by A. Sandoc (San Pablo, California United States)
I remember watching the original Return of the Living Dead in 1985. That zombie movie played on the premise that Night of the Living Dead actually happened. It was a great twist and interesting idea. The zombies in that film weren't shambling and dumb like the one's in Romero's film. Instead these zombies were pretty quick and could talk and formulate plans and traps. Also these zombies couldn't be killed by destroying the brain. It was the birth of the superzombies and it made for a fun experience. One thing it also had was a nice dose of comedy mixed in with the horror.

A few years later they had a sequel to Return of the Living Dead that was a good second helping. Nothing to write home about but it was a fun gory flick. Then came a second sequel which dropped the comedy and instead tried to be Romeo and Juliet meets brain-eating zombies. Other than the usual gore and bloodsplatter this second sequel was an utter failure. It took over 10 years for someone to try making a couple more sequels, but sure enough someone found a way to do it. They even found a good enough director in Ellory Elkayem (he directed the fun, campy giant spider monster flick Eight-Legged Freaks). There was talk that this third sequel will return the ROTLD franchise back to its roots of horror mixed with comedy. I was stoked about the news. Then when it came time to see Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis, I found out that it was going to go direct-to-cable. This usually means bad news all around about the overall quality of the finished film, but I was still going to give it a chance.

I finally saw its premiere on Sci-Fi channel in 2005 and all my low expectations weren't even reached by the what I saw on the TV. The movie starts off well enough and right from the get-go they don't hide the fact that the film is taking place in some Eastern European country. Peter Coyote the --- only actor with any sort of talent --- makes his appearance in this scene and there's not even any attempt to make his character abit mysterious of whether he's a good guy or a bad guy. Coyote's scientist role in the film screams evil mad scientist. The rest of the cast seemed like it was randomly picked from a college campus and from the streets of Romania. The dialogue was bad enough but having them read out loud by amateurs just made it all worse.

The whole premise of the film outside of reintroducing newcomers to the zombifying effects of Trioxin seemed like the writers were trying to emulate Resident Evil instead of Return of the Living Dead. There's the mega-corporation which deals with everything known to man and also research and develops illegal biowarfare technology like zombies armed with hi-tech weapons. Resident Evil did this better (thats not saying much) so it goes without saying that ROTLD4: Necropolis just didn't know what it wanted to be. There wasn't any of the comedy that made the first two films in the franchise so fun to watch. It looked as if they tried to make a serious zombie movie and instead it turned out to be seriously bad.

Even the zombies themselves ended up being inconsistent with the zombies from the first two films. Some seemed smart enough but most were of the Romero kind which goes against everything that is ROTLD. Their feeding habits even changed from eating nothing but brains but to eating other parts of the body.And they're not indestructible anymore. Shooting these zombies in the head will drop them like a sack of bricks.

There really wasn't anything fun about this sequel. I would've given it a second star if they just made the zombies right and added a higher gore-quotient. Zombie movies are suppose to be dumb, gory fun but instead Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis just ends up being dumb, horrible and awful. I had alot of hope in Ellory Elkayem as an up-and-coming genre director, but cranking out this film after making such a fun one in Eight-Legged Freaks is a mystery and saddening. I wouldn't recommend this film as a rental on dvd. Just go rent the original two films in the series and leave this one alone.

3/5 Average to below.
  by Christopher Raissi (Marietta, Georgia)
Although this movie is nowhere near on the level of the previous Return of the Living Dead movies, it was mildly entertaining. The vast majority of zombie films out there cause me to lose interest due to the poor acting and cinematography, but this one at least kept me watching until the end--in spite of the cliche'd story line.

1/5 At the top...in a way.
  by Marshall Carter (Irmo, SC United States)
You know, I really don't expect much out of zombie movies. You basically go into these knowing what to expect, but every now and then, you get one that manages to redefine what horror really is. In this case, horror is the 88 minutes of awfulness that is this film. Horrible dialogue, worse acting, and the assumption that the viewers themselves are as brain-dead as the zombies in the film. That ailment would be about the only way any form of entertainment is going to be had, unless you're a fan of an incohesive storyline, nonexistent direction or 20-something year-old teeny-boppers who couldn't act their way out of a wet paper sack. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that on the steaming pile of crap that the zombie film genre has become, this one is squarely at the top.

Director Ellory Elkayem should be tried for crimes against humanity, because that's exactly what this film is. In my opinion, he's managed to even usurp laughingstock Uwe Boll for the title of the world's most incompetent director. I'm sure some will say, "But it's just a zombie horror movie, you knew what it would be going in." Sure, that's true, but that just goes to show how this movie takes awful to a whole new level.You can tell that this is squarely aimed at a teenage, young adult audience (you can tell from all the "Extreme" content and the "metalcore" soundtrack), but knowing that just makes me ask this: Are the youthful really so dumb as to be entertained by this? I surely hope not...

1/5 Well, what did you expect?
  by N. Durham (Philadelphia, PA)
It's been quite a while since there was any film made with the words "Return of the Living Dead" in the title, and hearing those words brings up some great memories. The 1985 comedy/horror classic, it's lesser but even more comedy-laden sequel, and the third film which traded in the laughs for all out shocks and gore. All three films were good in varying degrees, which is why the idea that a made for the Sci-Fi Channel sequel will surely leave you thinking that the results of this will be anything less than comprehensible. Filmed in Romania, Peter Coyote is the only recognizable face as a mad scientist whose teenage nephew and his friends get mixed up with the local evil company; which leads to zombies running amok. Make no mistake that Return of the Living Dead 4 is beyond bad with a few good moments (when two friends come across a former female friend turned zombie, the one yells at the other one to shoot her, as the other responds "but I lost my virginity to her!") but what else did you expect? And if you think this is bad, just see the sequel (yes you read that right) entitled Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave.

1/5 Zombies with Russian accents?
  by Pieter Dams
If you're a fan of the first Return of the Living Dead movie, please don't watch this one. You'll loose ten years of your life from aggravation.
The film is supposed to be set in the United States, but was actually shot in Romania and most of the actors' accents are worse than Jurgen Prochnov's on a good day. The Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis won't even qualify as a "good bad cult movie" 20 years from now. Parts 2 and 3 were already pretty bad, but this one is just embarrassing. Trash, Suicide and even Julie Walker will roll over in their graves.
I wonder if the makers have even bothered to watch the first three films. Unlike Romero's walking corpses, the Return of the Living Dead zombies are not supposed to die when you shoot them in the head! Nor do they give speaches or box.
The movie does have one thing going for it, though: it proves that all those B actors they got playing KGB agents in cheap 80s crime flicks got their accents right after all.