Early Review: Zoombies 2 (2019)

Zombie animals rise up yet again in a new animal preserve, threatening those who work there, and the world!

REVIEW: The first Zoombies is one of my personal favorite Asylum movies, right behind Age of Dinosaurs, Triassic World, and 6-Headed Shark Attack, so suffice to say I was pretty excited when Asylum sent me a screener copy of Zoombies 2 to review, which up until about a week ago I didn't even know was coming out.

For the most part, this movie is entirely stand alone from the first movie, save for one short scene towards the end that ties it directly in (I won't spoil that scene here, but it was definitely an unexpected and fun one). This movie takes place at a entirely different animal preserve from the first, and deals with poachers that break in to hunt the animals, except one of the poison darts they use isn't poison but the formula discovered in the first movie, unleashing the animal zombie virus upon this place, causing the surviving poachers and park staff to have to work together to survive this new killer animal outbreak.

The characters are pretty fun here, with some genuinely funny moments and performances, although I'll need to watch the movie a couple more times to see if they end up being as memorable as the characters in the first movie. The CGI for the killer animal attacks are about on par with the first movie - some shots are pretty decent but most are below what you would expect from a modern Asylum movie, however that's also understandable as there's quite a lot of CG effects work that needs to go into a movie like this, and what they're attempting to do in those scenes are just, like the first movie, downright fun, and the fun level is what I look for most in these types of movies (such as a scene with a crocodile bursting out of a toilet, or the hippo attack on the river, or when the characters swing a bat to knock a raging porcupine out of a window, or even just some of the dialogue exchanges, there's pretty much a level of insane fun in every scene). Also, to it's credit, none of the bad CG moments are as visually-horrible as the zip-lining scene and elephant-riding scene from the first movie.

Also along those lines of fun, we get to see some familiar 'zombie' animals back, like the monkeys, hippos, and rhinos, but we also get tons of new ones like meerkats, snakes, crocodiles, and my personal favorite of the movie - the killer porcupines that can shoot their quills as projectiles! The killer wild animal attack scenes in this movie are just totally...well...wild (haha)! Although it is sadly missing a big recurring 'main' threat to latch onto and get excited about every time it pops on screen, like Kifo the Gorilla from the first movie.

While Zoombies 2 doesn't offer much different or new from the original 2015 movie, and it's pretty much just more of the same, I loved that original movie so I'm actually content to get more of the same, as it's more of the same of what I love! If, like me, you loved the first movie than there's plenty for you to enjoy with Zoombies 2 as well, even if the overall package is no longer quite as new or unique as the first. Despite that, it still oozes wild insane fun from beginning to end, and, as I said above and always saying in other reviews, the #1 top thing I look for in B-Movies such as this, above all else, is the level of cheesy fun on display.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward