Nothing telegraphs an explosion better than the line, “Are those fuel tanks?”
Meat Market 2 takes place some time after the events of the first film. We see Argenta kill Shahrokh after he turns into a zombie. She, one of the vampires, and a random one eyed Asian wander around foraging for food and supplies. They find another survivor and at her suggestion follow her. She tells them that she heard a radio broadcast about a place to go for food and shower, etc. and was on the way there herself. Naturally, they ignore all sense of skepticism and follow her only to be tricked. The survivor is really a Lieutenant for a military concentration camp or cult or some such nonsense, and surprise; the three of them are the newest addition to the camp. The camp is run by the Reconstruction Commerce Association of North America. Their goal is to rebuild society. They execute undesirables, perform experiments on some prisoners if acceptable for that sort of thing, and the healthy, attractive, and ethnically appropriate ones are put through orientation and processing to become part of “society.” How coincidental; 3 leads, 3 parts of the camp. As you might imagine, each one goes some place different. The camp is run by a white guy named Bill (first names for everyone, it’s a people friendly cult) who wears a white button down shirt, a black tie and is a powerful public speaker. The Association, as it’s called, has its own symbol and tapestries that display this symbol all over the walls, to illustrate how much like another “cult” that had “camps” it is.
Much of the same from the first film happening here. Not a bad (albeit familiar) story, and considering the films budget, executed fairly well. The director seems to have access to a lot of buildings. More atrocious acting. More sex with clothes on. Again, the zombies actually look pretty decent. I assume most of the budget went to the zombies.
There was a lot more focus on the story in this installment. The zombie action kind of serves as the bread of the film, mainly confined to the beginning and end. I had no issue with this choice, but it would have worked a lot better if the actors could act. In fact, this probably would be completely watchable with a bigger budget (mainly because the vampire’s laser gun died before she had a chance to use it). I could have dealt without yet another zombie movie reference. An Officer Romero is called over a loudspeaker. Yeah, I get it. You watch zombie films. You don’t have to spell it out, the deja vu is enough. I also probably would have been fine without the inclusion of a doctor fucking the eye socket of a skull. Didn’t really push the plot along, and I just assume every one that works at the camp is insane, so the skull fucking is not needed for character development either. At first, there seemed to be a lot of punk and or emo zombies about, what with the green and purple hair that a lot of them had. However, the main doctor, the chef and some others were pierced, so I made the assumption that the actors just did not want to change their appearances for the film, including the ones playing zombies. There also was a zombie that was wearing a shirt that said “straight edged Vegan” while eating someone. Damn scenesters. The ending leaves this film as clearly a middle of a larger story, as it concludes the “chapter,” but leaves plenty of room for the continuing adventures of Argenta and the vampire. I did like how at the very end, there was a black and white scene between the doctor from the first movie and the doctor from this one, prior to the zombie apocalypse giving a bit of story.
I have to categorize this as crap, mainly because when you combine horrible acting with a video camera, it rarely ends well. Brian Clement, the writer/director, clearly has a vision and is talented, and perhaps with better resources, he could produce some fine work.
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