DAY OF THE DEAD 2: CONTAGIUM (2005)
Starring Laurie Maria Baranyay and Simn Burzynski
From "Night of the Living Dead" to "Dawn" to "Day," the first three of George Romero's Living Dead films shared sequel/remake rights with other makers. John Russo cranked out a remake and sequel to "Night" (the horrible follow up "Children of the Living Dead"), while Richard Rubinstein licensed a remake to "Dawn". Rubinstein also licensed the rights for this, a "sequel" to the worst of the Romero zombie films, "Day of the Dead."
Like many of the other non-Romero sequels, this one throws continuity with Romero's universe to the wind. It's also way too talky.
The film opens with a pretty impressive zombie battle at a military installation in 1968, where some kind of contagium brought over by a Russian defector has just gotten loose. It infects people, brings the dead back to life, and creates the kind of epidemic we saw in all three of Romero's films. There's plenty of gore and shooting. A decent sum of money was spent on this scene.
Flash forward 35 years. The site is now home to a mental institution, and one of the patients has found a vial containing the old contagium. This is where the film seriously starts dragging. Lots and lots of talking heads. Needless to say, the contagium gets loose again. This time it creates talking zombies out of some of the patients. Things get interesting as more and more zombies are created, and chaos erupts.
For a low-budget, direct-to-video feature, "Day of the Dead 2" does boast some nice zombie action sequences.