Director: Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Year: 2013
Country: Japan
Alternate Titles: Reipu Zonbi: Lust of the Dead 2
Genre: Zombie, Exploitation
Plot:
Following the outbreak of the virus, a group of survivors trying to survive in the world with the zombie rapists finds that a greater threat might soon be lurking from a cult that intends to follow through with the zombie actions and forces them to fight off both threats.
Review:
This was a decent and overall enjoyable follow-up to the original. Accordingly, a lot of the positives here come from the ability to feature the rather explicit and extreme material with real ease. The film features an opening attack of a zombie alongside cult members, which makes for a stellar introduction to what's expected in this one. Likewise, the scenes involving the zombie with the engorged and comically-large private region or the cyborg going through the soldiers, play with that kind of familiar sleazy thrill quite easily. There's more entertaining material in this section away from the action, with the talking-head revealing the nature of their desires and dreams, while the various soft-core romps, including the lesbian sequence or masturbating while reminiscing through the photographs, come off rather well in their sleaze. That this leads into plenty of appreciable practical gore and bloodshed from Special Makeup Effects Artist Zerai Naoi as well, helps enhance this one.
Even better is the strong acting. Maki, played by Ren Miyamura, has a nice innocence to her that makes it easy to want her to survive the ordeal, and has some tender moments here that are quite effective. Dr. Yogami comes across as a rather typical scientist who's far more interested in the virus and its aftereffects than anything else, and her choosing to talk to the zombie which can wait rather than deal with the one lone man unaffected by the virus gives us a rather strong indication of this. The robot, rebuilt from the remains of Tamae from the first "Rape Zombie" and called Annu here, comes off rather nicely with the stiff, robotic movements and has some touching moments of humanity at the end, discussing the true nature of humanity. However, it's the leader of the Otaku group, credited only as Futsuki, who steals the movie. His diatribe to the gathered masses in their bunker is startlingly effective and feels like an actual propaganda speech that sells the effectiveness of the scene. The rest of the case is decent enough and nobody really does a terrible job here.
However, it's the scene at the rally, following the exhibition of the survivor and her demon baby that comes far closer to reveling in the rather depraved atmosphere present here, which goes a long way towards making this one watchable. By tackling the issue of sexuality in Japanese society, bringing forth the lowered sex rate and drive among real women that occur in real life, this becomes an incredibly biting sense of social commentary, as it claims their behavior brought about the cause of the virus and how it affects others. Openly declaring the intention of raping women as a direct result of mankind's past simply taking what they want from women and now the virus enabling them to do that once again, this one features a rather interesting ideology. By claiming that women have suffocated this desire through years of bullying men into being attracted to them and that this current outbreak will return the world back to that mindset, it offers an interesting topic for such a film.
There are a few problems here, as the biggest problem is the same with the first film. There's such a hard subject matter to take into account here as this attempts to support the theory that women are there simply to have men have sex with them since the chemical only affects men. Turning them into sex-crazed maniacs rather than flesh-eating hordes who will attack any and all women as often as they want, wherever they want to send quite a strong message, and the continuous sequences showing multiple men abusing and raping women in incredibly explicit and sexual means, doesn't come off in the best light.
Even still, the low-budget nature of the enhanced amount of obvious CGI during a large part of the scenes does hurt this one somewhat. The work is below acceptable levels, which makes the film look cheap. The artificial lightning bolts and gun-barrel flashes look fine, but it's the background plates of characters walking through the burnt-out cities that seem obviously bad and out-of-place in the rest of the film, and they aren't as necessary as they should've been. The other flaw is the rather low amount of zombie action in here, which is even more overt due to how short the movie is. It barely cracks an hour and yet doesn't have too many scenes with the zombies in action, giving this one a much more dragged-out pace than it needed. It's still enjoyable, but there are some obvious flaws in it.
Overall: **.5/5
Overall, this is quite a flawed yet still enjoyable effort in the saga. Offering plenty of strong social commentary that's not expected in such a film as this, along with some solid, sleazy thrills, there's plenty to like here, even with the utterly laughable computer-generated special effects and the rather lacking pace. It's an easy recommendation for fans of the previous film or those seeking more of these extreme exploitation efforts, yet those looking for a more rewarding fare should avoid this one.
This review was originally published on Asian Movie Pulse and is gratefully reprinted with their cooperation.
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