After a boat shows up in New York harbor with only a zombie on board, the daughter of the ship’s owner and a reporter head to Matul Island to discover what happened. What they find is a doctor trying to cure a plague of zombism.
Zombi 2‘s name has created a great deal of confusion, partly because it isn’t a sequel to anything. When Dario Argento re-cut Romero’s Dawn of the Dead for Italian audiences (focusing on the gore), he re-titled it Zombi. That film was a hit, so Director Lucio Fulci altered his zombie film to conform with Argento’s and titled it Zombi 2 as a marketing gimmick. It doesn’t fit in Romero’s Dead world, (the zombies are much slower, rarely looking up or moving their arms), but it is close. If one were to slide it in, it wouldn’t be a sequel, but a prequel, with its first scenes occurring before those of Night of the Living Dead. Since the title is of little use outside Italy, it is called Zombie in many countries (including the U.S.) but goes by at least four other titles (Island of the Flesh-Eaters, Island of the Living Dead, The Dead Are Among Us, Zombie Flesh-Eaters).
By any name, this is a flawed triumph. The flaws are everywhere, and include acting that goes from fair to non-existent, poor dubbing (all versions are dubbed as half the actors spoke English and half Italian), plot points that go nowhere, make-up that looks like flour and red paint, perplexingly stupid characters (sometimes they get rid of dead bodies and sometimes they keep them nearby), bodies that still have flesh after 400 years, and an annoying electronic score.
But the good outweigh the bad. Several shots, particularly the boat sailing into the harbor, a 360 degree turn about a shuffling zombie, and the ending (which I won’t give away), are artistic marvels. But zombie films rise or fall on their ability to tickle the viewer’s primitive feelings, to bring forth an instinctive response, and here Zombi 2 scores. The gore is extreme, and while much of it is nothing new, a few moments will shock the most jaded moviegoer (one involves an eye—I’ll say no more). Zombi 2 also provides the bizarre. In a mesmerizing series of scenes, Fulci delivers first a topless scuba diver (the underwater photography is clear and crisp), then a submerged battle between the diver and a zombie, and finally a contest between the undead and a shark. That’s something no one should miss.
Fulci went on to make the zombie/hell gate feature, The Beyond.