Review of Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005) by Jeff R — 22 Jun 2011

Seeing as how I was on a recent zombie film streak (Dawn of the Dead and Undead) I had decided on one of the latter Return of the Living Dead sequels. Not knowing which was which nor caring, I ended up watching Part 5.

Return of the Living Dead is a movie I adore and Part 3 is a movie I highly enjoyed so I didn't think it would hurt to see the rest. I was warned by many friends, many times to not even bother and that the recent sequels were horrible.

Alas, curiosity took over (gotta shake that habit) and I sat down with this one. I'm going to make an official apology to my friends who tried to warn me, I love you all and will try to pay closer attention from now on.

Rave to the Grave was one of the worst movies I've ever seen, I don't even know where to begin. I'll begin with the dialogue. The most childish, unfunny and RIDICULOUS lines I've ever heard came directly from this flick.

I don't even want to mention any as I need to get them out of my head pronto. Its attempt at humor was also ridiculously sad and so juvenile I couldn't believe that this was an R rated flick. The pacing was slow as watching paint dry and Ellroy Elkayem must have been underpaid because the directing here seemed like somebody just kept saying 'whatever' to the boring ideas or keeping it one-note the entire way.

Point-and-shoot. That's it. Nothing interesting to be found here. It's a good thing Aimee Lynn Chadwick was cute because her performance was lousy. Either she's not very good or she was getting underpaid.

Cory C. Hardict was decent with what he had. John Keefe surprisingly manages to keep it together and comes out of this crud looking pretty good. Jenny Mollen looked hot... that's it. Peter Coyote (great name) amused me and I couldn't believe his over-the-top performance here.

But it worked in its favor for me (not much of a favor, but it was appreciated). Cain Mihnea Manoliu was annoying, unfunny and excruciating to see/hear after a while. Furthermore you get a rotten soundtrack, obvious dubbing and terrible production values.

Anything positive? Again, Peter Coyote would amuse me any time he popped up. I just couldn't get over this guy! He's insane! The gore was pretty impressive when it arose and there was plenty of female nudity here that anyone who digs on that could enjoy.

But mark my words: this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen and I love zombie flicks. Poorly done in every sense of the word. I will never see this piece of sh*t again. Stick with Romero's trilogy or the original Return of the Living Dead and save your money and time.

.. The worst.