Scooby-Doo: Return to Zombie Island / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Who is the new real cat person? Some think he is an unknown accomplice to Simone and Lena. Others think he might be someone new who found the statue after the Mystery gang defeated the villains of the original movie. While others think he might be the cat god himself who came out to get revenge on the Scooby gang when they returned to the island.
- One could argue that perhaps Velma was trying to prove the first visit to Moonscar Island was a hoax because she was traumatized by the events she witnessed the first time around and is willing to believe any excuse that says it wasn't real.
Awesome Music: Robert J. Kral and Andy Sturmer team up to create some really good music, whether it’s the opening intro or the movie's two songs.
Fan-Disliked Explanation: The retcons to explain why the characters are now back to being teenagers and why Daphne isn't hosting a TV show anymore (it's clumsily handwaved as having been a high school project). Many fans have called this out, pointing out the extreme improbability of teenagers getting a reality show that travels across the country, which in the original movie was stated to be going into its second season, and still have time to solve mysteries and get through school. It also seems unlikely that Shaggy would be employed as a customs officer and Velma would be owning and running a bookstore if they were high schoolers. Not to mention it would retroactively make Velma and Beau Neville's Ship Tease kind of creepy given he's clearly an adult. Many fans didn't even mind they were adults in that film and liked that the group had matured a little while not completely getting over their quirks (they weren't even that old, in their early 20s at least, and still mystery solving), stating the whole retcon was just a personal preference of the writers trying to harken back to the original series that makes little sense in this continuity.
Fanon Discontinuity: After the film was released, several fans naturally didn't gel with the story and found it a disservice to the original film ^note, from the characterization of the Mystery Inc crew (especially Velma now being a Flat-Earth Atheist when she clearly wasn't in the original movie) to the villain's plot, and especially around the retcons in an utterly clumsy attempt to explain why the characters are still teenagers when they were clearly adults in the first Zombie Island movie. These fans much prefer to think this film either never happened or is set in an Alternate Continuity.
Nightmare Fuel: While the film is pretty tame, especially compared to its infamously Darker and Edgier predecessor, the final montage where Alan's speculation about a real cat creature is confirmed by the creature in question still at large, looking at the camera with the full moon in the background, is pretty intimidating. Alan also suggests that the gang didn't "get them all", possibly foreshadowing that even the black cat creature isn't the only agent of the mysterious cat god at work out there. All in all, despite the main mystery being solved, things end on a somewhat uncertain, ominous note.
The Scrappy: Alan Smithee, the obnoxious Jerkass film director who is making a movie about Moonscar Island and turns out to be the one behind the "Scooby-Doo" Hoax. Not only is he exploiting the horrific deaths of countless people with his film, but he also becomes a Karma Houdini despite committing a bunch of crimes.
Sequelitis: To say that this film is considered a step down from the original would be a major understatement. It doesn't help that Zombie Island is widely considered one of the best Scooby-Doo films ever made and was praised for its Darker and Edgier approach, while this film has a much goofier and lighter tone, is only loosely connected to the first film, and straight-up retcons parts of it (to the point where it can break Willing Suspension of Disbelief that these films occurred in the same continuity). Even if the film isn't seen as bad, it's still widely viewed as a poor follow-up to Zombie Island.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The first four movies established a Darker and Edgier tone where the Gang became adults (and everything that ensues with that, including splitting up to enter the workforce) and got into cases where they went up against real monsters. This has been popularly received for taking a new and more serious yet still fun take on such a beloved franchise. Here, it's retconned that the Gang was always teens like usual during these movies because apparently, the writing staff couldn't make the timelines work otherwise and largely seem to be against the whole mentality of the previous Zombie Island movie in general, wanting the series to go back to its goofier horror comedy aspects. This also means that the well-acclaimed grunge metal of Zombie Island is gone and replaced by campier music that was generally regarded as forgettable.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: So they finally used Elvira, a very popular horror icon, which in itself had loads of potential to write a crossover Scooby story around... and they stick her in an unrelated tale and just have her in a small cameo.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Fans had a lot of ideas about how this sequel would come about. Some fans were left feeling disappointed that there wasn't really a return of some of the characters from Zombie Island as this sequel chose to stage a new mystery around a location from the old mystery rather than continuing that specific story. What's more the movie shows that one of the cat people was indeed real and seem to have a grudge against the gang for what happened in the original. Citing, at the very least, they could've done it like Witch's Ghost: a fake mystery in the first half and a real supernatural threat in the second focusing on the cat monster which would've been both a nice anniversary showing for the franchise and the original Zombie Island movie. But instead, the movie stays completely with the usual "Bad Guys in Mask" deal with the twist being that the "cat monsters" are likewise fake. However, the plot fails as it banks on people having watched the first movie (giving a very half-hearted recap in the middle of it), and the zombie and cat monster plots never correlate as in the original (soon as the zombies are unmasked halfway through the film, the "cat people" are the main focus), and having no real build-up or reason for them to be there otherwise. Any focus on the real cat person is just used as a tease and never explored. The mostly comedic tone also turned some people off.
Uncertain Audience: The film clearly wants to be a Milestone Celebration for the franchise's 50th anniversary, hence the Lighter and Softer tone, winks and nudges to the series lore, and uses aesthetics and music similar to the original series. It also spends time throwing shade at Zombie Island and by extension, all Scooby media with real supernatural threats and darker stories, clearly favoring the light, campy original series' tone, and giving several clumsy retcons to downplay or remove the innovations of Zombie Island. This is even though the film was hyped up as a Milestone Celebration and legacy sequel to Zombie Island, clearly trying to appeal to the fanbase of that film.
Unexpected Character:
- Everyone mostly expected this film to ignore the unfinished elements of the last film, but to nearly everyone's surprise, the Sheriff returned in this movie too.
- The inclusion of Elvira in a cameo likewise raised some eyebrows.

YMMV / Scooby-Doo: Return to Zombie Island

Edit Locked