Sequels. Sometimes, in the case of films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, they bring something completely new and different to the table. Other times, filmmakers take the ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it’ approach, delivering more of the same.

The Ford brothers’ follow-up to their 2010 zombie film The Dead falls into the latter category. But not to worry. Because more of the same isn’t always a bad thing in the world of sequels, especially when what’s being replicated is one of the finest zombie movies in recent years.

Released onto DVD and Blu-ray this week, The Dead 2: India features the same simple premise of its predecessor, with the locale of course changing from Africa to India. Like in the first film, an American teams up with a local on an epic journey, the path to their destination paved with undead ghouls.

American turbine engineer Nicholas Burton is the main character this time around, finding himself 300 miles away from his pregnant girlfriend Ishani, when the dead start rising from their graves. After losing his only mode of transportation, Nicolas meets up with a young boy named Javed, and the two of them traverse the treacherous landscape together, in a desperate bid to save Ishani before it’s too late.

Whereas The Dead was about fathers searching for their sons, The Dead 2 is more of a love story wrapped up inside of a zombie film, and unfortunately it’s that core story that’s the weakest aspect of the entire movie.

It’s never clear how long Ishani and Nicholas have been together and I found myself not all that invested in their relationship, which is likely a side effect of the fact that we never see them together, before shit hits the fan. By jumping right into the action, the script leaves little room for character and relationship development, and that relationship as well as the character of Ishani both suffer, as a result.

Throughout the majority of the film, Ishani is trying to convince her traditional father that Nicholas is the man for her, and those portions of the movie just aren’t half as engaging as the ones centering on Nicholas’ journey. Rather than rooting for their reunion or feeling the love between them, the whole relationship falls pretty damn flat, and some bad acting from the lead actress doesn’t do much to help matters.

Thankfully, there is a relationship beating at the heart of the film that does feel genuine and is both well written and acted, that being the relationship between Nicholas and Javed. As the makeshift father and son duo fight for their lives amongst hordes of the undead, they both learn a whole lot about themselves, through one another, and it’s their relationship that’s most engaging. The Ford Brothers clearly understand that the best zombie films have a large focus on human drama and interaction, and the companionship between Nicholas and Javed adequately fills the gap left by the lackluster relationship that drives the plot.

As for the zombies, they’re of the slow walking, limited makeup variety, just as they were in The Dead. Modern day movie zombies don’t get much more frightening or well executed than what the brothers Ford have brought to the table with both films, giving their budding franchise an old-school feel that’s sorely lacking from most zombie movies to come in the wake of George Romero’s game-changing classics.

The brothers definitely know their zombies and the ones on display here are quite chilling, with little more than white contact lenses marking the difference between the dead and the living. It’s simple and it totally works, making the film realistic rather than gruesomely over the top. Zombies don’t get scarier the messier they look, and the zombies that inhabit The Dead 2 are refreshingly simple and effective – even if they never feel like much of a threat, especially to our hero.

As for the gore, it’s plentiful and at times savagely brutal, with both practical effects and CG blood coming together to convey the carnage. The CGI is noticeable but never distracting, proving that high-tech effects don’t always have to ruin present day horror films.

All in all, The Dead 2 does a whole lot more right than it does wrong, and the only real complaint I have about it is that it feels just a little too similar to what we saw back in 2010. Whereas The Dead felt like such a breath of fresh air, after so many piss poor zombie films, The Dead 2 feels like that exact same breath, and I couldn’t help but wish a bit of a different path was taken.

That said, striving to recreate one of the best zombie films in recent years is again not a horrible thing, and in doing so the Ford brothers have created another zombie movie that’s light years ahead of most of the sub genre’s last several years of output. The Dead 2 is a damn fine zombie film, at the end of the day, helping to once again improve the reputation of modern day zombie cinema.

Here’s to hoping that if the Ford brothers decide to make The Dead a trilogy, they go in a slightly different direction with the third installment. I would love to see them do another, I’m just not sure that watching another dude trade vehicles and narrowly avoid zombie attacks for 90 minutes would remain compelling the third time around.