The Dead, the Damned, and the Dreadfully Dull
There are bad zombie movies, and then there are zombie movies that make you question whether the undead are the lucky ones. The Dead and the Damned 2 (also known, because it needed more names to hide behind, as The Dead, the Damned, and the Darkness or Tom Sawyer vs. Zombies) is the cinematic equivalent of a corpse someone forgot to bury.
Written and directed by Rene Perez—the Ed Wood of modern DTV horror—this 2014 sequel shuffles onto your screen, moaning and drooling, desperately searching for brains it will never find. It’s the follow-up to The Dead and the Damned(2010), a zombie western no one asked for and even fewer watched, and somehow manages to make its predecessor look like The Godfather.
The Plot (Or Something Approximating One)
We open on a woman and a little girl trapped in a house surrounded by zombies. Within five minutes, the woman dies, the girl escapes, and we realize this movie’s editing is being handled by a lawnmower.
Enter Lt. Colonel Sawyer (Robert Tweten), a man with the charisma of wet cardboard and dialogue so stiff it might be auditioning for a plank. He’s driving through a desolate wasteland when he encounters some small-town sheriffs who warn him not to continue. The road ahead, they say, is crawling with zombies. Naturally, Sawyer does what every protagonist in a bad horror film does: ignores all advice and goes anyway.
Meanwhile, we meet Stephanie (Iren Levy), a mute survivor whose silence might be the movie’s most merciful feature. She’s attacked, saved, attacked again, climbs a crane for no reason, and gets rescued by Sawyer, who must have accidentally wandered into her subplot while looking for his own.
There’s talk of safe zones, a dam, a dead family, and a plan to scatter ashes by the ocean—all of which sound like they could be emotional, if the film weren’t emotionally comatose.
The rest of the runtime consists of Sawyer wandering around the apocalypse like he’s looking for the nearest diner, while zombies stumble in slow motion, probably wondering why they signed up for this gig.
Acting: The Real Apocalypse
The acting in The Dead and the Damned 2 is so wooden, you could build a cabin out of it. Robert Tweten delivers every line as though he’s just been informed he’s starring in this movie against his will. Iren Levy, as the mute survivor, has the thankless job of expressing terror without dialogue—a challenge she meets with a single facial expression: “mildly inconvenienced.”
John J. Welsh plays Wilson, a friendly survivor who provides exposition by stating things the audience already knows. His big insight? “The zombies are getting weaker.” Thank you, Dr. Obvious. Without your groundbreaking research, we might have missed that the creatures moving at one mile per hour aren’t in peak condition.
And then there’s Richard Tyson as the Sheriff. Tyson, bless him, delivers his lines like he’s trying to remember what movie he’s in. You can almost see the moment he realizes this isn’t Kindergarten Cop 2.
Zombies, Guns, and the Sound of Silence
You’d think a zombie film would at least get one thing right: zombies. But Perez’s undead are less “terrifying plague of the damned” and more “Halloween extras waiting for lunch break.” Their makeup looks like it was applied with a spatula, their movements resemble interpretive dance, and the sound effects—oh, the sound effects—are straight from the “Free Audio Horror Pack Vol. 1” library.
Gunfire sounds like someone slapping two pieces of wood together, and every explosion looks like a screensaver from Windows 98. The movie loves its gun battles so much it forgets to include tension, pacing, or reason.
At one point, Sawyer single-handedly wipes out a horde of zombies using a rifle that apparently has infinite ammunition. Either that, or the film’s continuity editor died halfway through production and was replaced by a Roomba.
The Script: Now Featuring 100% Less Logic
If the screenplay were a person, it would be that guy at the bar explaining his “zombie novel” for three hours while everyone quietly leaves. The dialogue is either laughably expository (“We have to get to the dam!” “The dam is our only hope!” “But the dam is infested!”) or emotional in a way that suggests the actors were reading their lines off a cereal box.
Sawyer’s tragic backstory—he lost his wife and daughter—is supposed to ground the movie in human emotion. Instead, it feels like a bad episode of Walker, Texas Ranger rewritten by ChatGPT in 2012. When he finally scatters their ashes at the ocean, it’s meant to be cathartic. Instead, you’ll be too busy wondering if Perez filmed this entire movie in a single afternoon.
And then, just when you think it’s over, there’s a twist: Sawyer’s daughter is alive! Except she’s… fine? And the zombies are… also fine? And everyone just kind of… hangs out? It’s the most anticlimactic “reunion” since the Friends reboot that never happened.
The Cinematography: Apocalypse Brought to You by a GoPro
Perez, who also handles cinematography, has a thing for shaky shots and brown filters. Everything looks like it was filmed through a bottle of expired Gatorade. Half the time, the camera seems to be filming random shrubs instead of actors.
There are moments where the lighting is so bad, you can’t tell whether the scene takes place at dawn, dusk, or inside a microwave. The film’s title promised darkness, but it delivers dimness—a murky blend of sepia tones and despair.
Perez also loves slow motion. Every zombie lurch, every gunshot, every dramatic glance gets the slo-mo treatment, as if he’s trying to stretch 40 minutes of footage into a feature runtime. By the end, you’ll start wishing your own life had a fast-forward button.
The Message: Zombies Are People Too (Boring People)
The film occasionally hints at deeper themes—guilt, survival, redemption—but then immediately forgets them. At one point, Sawyer considers suicide by the sea, holding a gun to his temple. It’s the one moment that could have had weight, but the movie undercuts it by cutting to yet another zombie attack staged like a bad LARP.
Wilson rambles about humanity’s mistakes, government conspiracies, and how “the virus was meant to control the population,” which might’ve been profound if it weren’t delivered like a YouTube comment section.
And Stephanie—the mute woman who could have been the emotional anchor—disappears for long stretches, reappearing only to look confused or slightly damp.
The Ending: It’s Over. You Survived. Barely.
By the time the credits roll, Sawyer has cleared the dam, reunited with his daughter, and found peace. You, on the other hand, have found the remote and are ready to exorcise this movie from your memory.
The final shot of father and daughter walking along the ocean should be touching. Instead, it feels like Perez is saying, “See? We made it to 90 minutes. Let’s call it a day.”
The Verdict: The Damned Part Is Accurate
The Dead and the Damned 2 is not scary. It’s not thrilling. It’s not even unintentionally funny enough to be a “so-bad-it’s-good” experience. It’s just… there, shambling along like the zombies it depicts, moaning softly, searching for meaning and failing miserably.
The film tries to be The Walking Dead on a shoestring budget, but ends up more like The Limping Dead. Every line, every shot, every limp plot twist screams of creative exhaustion.
So, if you’re in the mood for a zombie flick, watch Train to Busan. Watch 28 Days Later. Heck, watch Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. But whatever you do, don’t wander into The Dead and the Damned 2. Because, much like its characters, once you’re inside, there’s no escaping the boredom.
Final rating:
1 out of 10 rotting corpses.
And that’s only because zero would require effort—something this movie never demonstrates.
