… it was revealed to be less of a straight horror film and more of an ambitious arthouse item that uses both horror and arthouse genre conventions to critique the world of indie genre filmmaking birthed by Romero.

…as anyone who lived through the '80s knows, sequels had become an inevitability in the American film business. However, Hooper was not content to give audiences more of the same. What he created was as much a dark comedy as it was a horror film, a ruthless satire that took on the attitudes of the '80s as well as the legacy of the first film.