DragonFlix released Return of the Living Dead: Aftermath on Halloween, billing it as a reunion with two stars of Dan O’Bannon’s 1985 original: Linnea Quigley and Beverly Randolph, who played punk ghouls Trash and Tina. Weeks later, both actors say the finished film bears little resemblance to what they agreed to make.
Speaking with The Caffeinated Horror Dude, Randolph said she shot for three days opposite Thom Mathews, and that she had been told in advance that a cemetery sequence would rely on CGI. What caught her off guard, she said, was how her own voice came out in the final cut: “We all sound like robots through the entire thing.” Her request afterward, she told the hosts, was simple: “I said just take me out of it.”
Quigley, who says she helped recruit cast and promote Aftermath before stepping back from the project, recalled warning director Richard Driscoll directly: “Whatever you do, do not do any AI because people don’t like it. The fans do not like it.” She says she withdrew once she saw how extensively artificial intelligence was being used, and does not appear on screen in the finished film.
Neither the film’s announcement nor its marketing mentioned AI involvement. Kotaku has reported that the finished film is almost entirely AI generated; Rue Morgue has not independently verified the extent of that claim, and DragonFlix had not publicly responded to the actors’ comments as of this writing.
