And now we reach the end my friends. Horror aplenty this past year, so why not close it out with one good scare?
Sequels can be a tricky thing. Too many and you risk diluting what made the first one good. This one, however, is not one of those. It is bit a odd. Looking at the Universal and even Hammer films, one tends to notice they had sequels out as little as the same year the previous ones, yet Romero waited a full ten years before coming back to the world set up in Night of the Living Dead.
His exact reasons aren't known, but modern cinema can agree it was good he waited.
If you recall the previous film, things were pretty bad, what with the dead rising to eat the flesh of the living, and it's only gotten worse since then. A television station, WGON-TV in Pittsburgh, is broadcasting what might be its last show.
While two scientists hold a debate on what exactly is happening, Francine Parker (Gaylen Ross) and her boyfriend Steven Andrews (David Emge) are deciding that maybe trying to beat the other stations in ratings is a losing game. The whole city is being ordered to evacuate while the dead walk. Who cares about ratings?
Steven's the station helicopter pilot and his idea to grab a few friends and get the hell out of dodge. Francine agrees.
Speaking of those friends, Roger DeMarco (Scott Reiniger) and Peter Washington (Ken Foree) are SWAT officers. The police have been a little busy these past few weeks. Despite the evacuation order, many citizens are refusing to leave and many have also ignored the order to turn over their dead. This means when the SWAT boys break into a boarded up hotel they have more problems to deal with besides a few armed folks.
Shooting the zombies in the basement, Roger and Pete meet up with Steven and Francine and leave the burning city behind. The question is now, where do they go? The outlaying countryside is awash with the dead and redneck hunters. After being attacked while refueling, they spot what might prove to be safe haven: a shopping mall.
The mall and the surrounding parking lot is filled with zombies, true, but it is filled with supplies. Plus the upper offices aren't exactly open to the public, so it makes sense to at least squat there for a bit.
They manage to seal off the building by hotwiring the delivery trucks and blocking off the anchor store entrances, but Roger is bitten while driving the last one. He lingers bit before dying. Peter puts him down before he comes back. After that, the mall is theirs.
At first, everyone is fine. They steal all the money in the bank, play all the arcade games, and help themselves to whatever fancy object catches their eye...but soon they realize their problem. They're trapped. It is a nice prison, but it is still a prison.
The next problem comes from a roving gang of bikers. They call the mall, asking to be let in. Stephan and Peter refuse. They might be trapped, but it is their mall and they're not going to share it. The bikers and their leader (Tom Savini) don't take this very well and force their way inside. Doing this also lets the zombies in too.
The bikers find themselves overwhelmed by the undead (including one guy who stops to take his blood pressure), but Stephan gets bitten during the fray. Undead, he still remembers how to get into the secret office where Peter and Francine are. Can the last two humans survive?
Fantastic is the only word I can use. The topics Romero tackles (consumerism, the media, even class warfare) are broad, but he handles them with care. Look at the loot the bikers go for, namely TVs and radios. What are they going to watch? The three heroes even agree they don't need most of what the mall has, but damned if they're just going to hand it over to some greasy longhairs. There is just so much he got right with this that it more than covers whatever flaws exist.
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