Pathogen

Rating: 

Year Released: 2006

Zombie Speed: Slow

Cause of Zombie Outbreak: Failed nanotech cancer cure in drinking water.

Best Zombie: Stacy’s little brother.

Most Creative Weapon: The skull-penetratingly sharp tree branch.

Best Death: Dannie’s last stand, as the only remaining survivor of her group she walks out, axe in hand, to go down fighting.

Sub-Genre: Indie

Amanda Jean’s Review: Pathogen isn’t just any zombie movie, it’s a zombie movie made by a 12 year old girl! This movie shows how much talent is bottled up inside young Emily Hagins. Pathogen serves up a decent plot, horrible acting, and another reason you should steer clear of water. YAYY for talented girls showing their strengths! (P.S. You’ll get over the bad acting when you remind yourself they are just a group of her middle school friends and parents.)

Matt’s Review: It’s challenging to really judge this movie because the fact that it was made at all is a remarkable feat in its own right. Pathogen was a feature-length film written, directed and edited by a 12-year-old! While the film is definitely not without its faults (primarily the acting, featuring amateur child actors in most of the lead roles), it is very endearing and unique in that this is the first zombie film that I know of to be shown from a kids perspective. Almost like Goonies with zombies… but you know, not that awesome. Seeing something like this created by a 12-year-old makes me think I should be doing so much more at the age of 30! Since making Pathogen, director Emily Hagins, has gone on to make a couple more feature-length films, including My Sucky Teen Romance, which had its premier at this years SXSW and features a few members of the Pathogen cast. They’ve all clearly come a long way and I expect we’ll be seeing more great things from Emily and co. in the future.

Also, if you can’t get enough Pathogen, be sure to check out the full length documentary about the making of the film, Zombie Girl: The Movie, which is streaming on Netflix now!

Up next is Outpost, a British zombie movie that I purchased in the discount DVD rack at Walgreens… clearly a mark of quality!

REC 2 

Rating: 

Year Released: 2009

Zombie Speed: Fast

Cause of Zombie Outbreak: Demonic possession caused by viral outbreak (it makes sense in context… mostly).

Best Zombie: Creepy little kids inside the air vents.

Most Creative Weapon: Fireworks! At one point a large projectile-style firework is shoved into the mouth of an attacking zombie and awesomeness ensues.

Best Death: See above! Fireworks, man!

Sub-Genre: Found Footage

Amanda Jean’s Review: After it seemed like nearly everyone was dead in the first third of the film I wasn’t sure what they were going to do for the rest of the time. Then I was really confused when spewing bible versus and bearing crucifixes worked against the infected. But while REC 2 confused me a few times it corresponded very well with REC. Oh and get excited for the hot make out scene at the end.

Matt’s Review: While its predecessor, the excellent Spanish film REC (remade almost shot-for-shot in America as Quarantine), definitely qualified as a zombie film the first time around, REC 2 may have retroactively taken away REC’s official zombie status by explaining the cause of the outbreak to be virus-based demonic possession. But, zombies or not, REC 2 is a great addition to the REC franchise, building upon and expanding the myth set forth by the original film and setting up what can only be another solid sequel (and prequel too, if the rumors are correct!).

Up next is Pathogen, a full feature-length zombie film by then-12-year-old Director Emily Hagins!

For more info on our ratings system go here.

Dead Men Walking

Rating: 

Year Released: 2005

Zombie Speed: Fast

Cause of Zombie Outbreak: Experimental Bio-Toxin

Best Zombie: Given that this film takes place entirely inside a prison all the zombies are pretty much the same.

Most Creative Weapon: No real creative weapons either, just a guns and a lot of running. Again, not a lot of options inside a prison.

Best Death: A mother and her two children show up in the middle of the prison for some unexplained reason (visiting their dad I guess?). When one of the zombies discovers the family he proceeds to attack the little girl and rip out all her intestines. It was disturbingly amusing to see a little kid trying to act out something so gruesome.

Sub-Genre: Prison Film

Amanda Jean’s Review: Very gory, bad acting, awesome metal songs and a super accurate Mexican gang. The plot wasn’t such a bad idea until I saw The Asylum has another movie with pretty much the same plot except subtract zombies and add a monster. But, oh man, what about that ending? Let me know when Dead Men Walking 2 comes out. Oh and did I mention it’s very gory?

Matt’s Review: The Asylum is a film studio known for its low budget “mock-buster” films created to capitalize on the success of other major films such as Transmorphers, Paranormal Entity, Mega Piranha and Snakes on a Train (most of which fit into the “so bad it’s good” category) however, Dead Men Walking was a rare original story from the studio. Ironically since most zombie films are produced independently with a very low budget, Dead Men Walking was able to utilize The Asylum’s relatively high budget to produce a well made and decent looking film (albeit poorly acted… but what do you expect?). Unfortunately, while its production values allow it to look more polished than your average zombie film, the story is completely unoriginal and devoid of any of the humor that that tends to make the best zombie films stand out among the crowd. All in all, Dead Men Walking is the epitome of an average zombie film with absolutely nothing special to set it apart from the plethora of other films in the genre.

Up next week(ish) is [REC] 2, sequel to the brilliant 2007 Spanish “found footage” film, [REC] (which was remade nearly shot-for-shot as the American film Quarantine)!

For more info on our ratings system go here.

Aaah! Zombies!!

Rating: 

Year Released: 2007

Zombie Speed: Slow

Cause of Zombie Outbreak: Captain America style super soldier serum gone wrong mixed with soft serve ice cream and beer.

Best Zombie: Sombrero wearing waiter zombie.

Most Creative Weapon: Dynamite.

Best Death: Mike, now only a zombie head, sacrifices himself for the rest of the zombie group by holding a grenade in his mouth and pulling the pin with his tongue.

Sub-Genre: Comedy

Amanda Jean’s Review: Aaah! Zombies!! made things really interesting and new by switching between the point of view of the zombies and the non-infected throughout movie. The zombie bowling match, horrible bloody toupée, zombie make out scene and Thing T. Thing were just icing on the “slightly” green soft serve (which I will never eat again).

Matt’s Review: Aaah! Zombies!! is unique, and in a world filled with zombie movies that fact alone is pretty impressive. For the first time in any zombie movie (to my knowledge) you get a real inside look at what it’s like to BE a zombie. In Aaah! Zombies!! the characters are actually unaware that they themselves are the living dead so they’re going through their day in the most natural way possible while thinking the world around them is going crazy. A rather brilliant premise, unfortunately the brilliance ends there. In general the film is slow, boring and constantly lost my attention, however there was more than a few really solid laughs sprinkled throughout. Edited down to a 30 minute short, Aaah! Zombies!! could have been hilarious but it just isn’t an interesting feature length film.

Sorry for the delay in getting this review up, April is a busy time for us! We’re back into the swing of things now and up next week(ish) is Dead Men Walking, I know nothing about this movie… I just randomly got the DVD at a Blockbuster Video closing sale!

For more info on our ratings system go here.

Zombies of Mass Destruction

Rating: 

Year Released: 2010

Zombie Speed: Slow

Cause of Zombie Outbreak: Terrorist biological weapon

Best Zombie: Tom’s Mom… she eats her own eyeball.

Most Creative Weapon: The weed whacker!

Best Death: Reverend Haggis, who has his arm ripped off by a zombie that then proceeds to beat Haggis to death with his own severed arm.

Sub-Genre: A self-proclaimed “Political Zomedy”

Our Review: While we give this film some credit for attempting to use the zombie movie medium to make a point about xenophobia and homophobia (among other political statements), those points seem to fall a bit flat. The jokes, however, do not. Zombies of Mass Destruction is a clever and unique independent horror-comedy with remarkably high production values for a low budget flick. We would have liked to have seen the two concurrent story-lines come together with a little more payoff but but apart from that this was a great film.

By the way, this movie is in no way related to the comic book of the same name and apart from the “biological weapon” thing, the two aren’t at all similar. The comic is pretty great though so I wouldn’t feel right not giving it a plug on here as well (and I believe it’s been optioned to be a movie too!).     

Up next week(ish) is Aaah! Zombies!, because “zombies are people too”.

For more info on our ratings system go here.

RAIDERS OF THE LIVING DEAD

Rating: 

Year Released: 1986

Zombie Speed: Slowish

Cause of Zombie Outbreak: Radioactive waste or maybe voodoo? We’re not quite sure.

Best Zombie: They’re all equally unimpressive.

Most Creative Weapon: Laser guns made from laserdisc players!

Best Death: All the zombies who died getting shot with the homemade laser guns. Pew pew!

Sub-Genre: Crime Drama… maybe?

Amanda Jean’s Review: 30 minutes into the movie you finally get some dialogue. One hour into the movie you remember your actually watching a zombie movie. Raiders of the Living Dead was confusing, boring and had nothing to do with Indiana Jones (boo!). Just fast forward to all the parts with the laser made from a laserdisc player and you’ll be fine.

Matt’s Review: Obviously I wanted to watch this movie based purely on the name. I was really hoping for a whip-toting, fedora-wearing zombie hunter but what we got was… well I’m not really sure. I still have no idea what the plot of this movie was. However, there was one highlight: the theme song! This brilliant 80s rock anthem opens the movie and appears throughout the film in different forms. Cheesy, yes, but fun and oddly catchy. Don’t let the trailer fool you (because the trailer is pretty funny), this movie sucks pretty bad… aside from that theme song! 

Up next week(ish) is Aaah! Zombies!, because “zombies are people too”. Correction, we’ll be reviewing Zombies of Mass Destruction next week (because it’s going off of Netflix steaming that week and we really want to watch it)!

For more info on our ratings system go here.

DAWN OF THE DEAD (Remake)

Rating:

Year Released: 2004

Zombie Speed: Fast

Cause of Zombie Outbreak: Unknown

Best Zombie: Burt Reynolds (if you’ve seen it you’ll know what we’re talking about).

Most Creative Weapon: Croquet Mallet

Best Death: Ty’s death… there’s nothing really special about it but it’s just nice to see the guy who’s been a jerk for the entire movie finally getting his comeuppance.

Sub-Genre: Dystopian

Amanda Jean’s Review: The Dawn of the Dead remake might not seem like the great Romero film but its still pretty awesome. The only similarities are a mall environment and the undead lurking outside (fast ones!). BUT! This movie does have  zombie babies, a killing-celebrity-zombie-look-a-likes game, a cute dog (that survives) and Phil from Modern Family in living and undead form. Now go watch this movie and come up with an explanation on how the parking garage zombie can jump with no legs (you will understand soon enough).

Matt’s Review: Calling this movie a remake really undersells it. Apart from the fact that it involves zombies and a mall it has very little to do with the original Dawn of the Dead, which is a good thing. Dawn didn’t need a remake and I’m dissapointed that the studio behind this film felt the need to create a “remake” knowing that it would be more successful with an established fanbase rather than just allowing Zach Snyder to create his own fresh zombie mythos. Complaining aside, this new Dawn is a great zombie film in its own right and definitely one of the better non-comedy zombie films to be made in the last two decades, even better than some of Romero’s recent films. Also the “zombies that look like famous celebrities” scene is one of the my absolute favorite scenes in the history of zombie fiction. The scene is on YouTube, check it out here. Snyder has a new film, Sucker Punch, coming out in a few weeks, go see it!

Up next week(ish) is Raiders of the Living Dead! If this movie is completely devoid of fedoras we’ll be very upset… we’re prepared to be upset.

For more info on our ratings system go here.

DAWN OF THE DEAD

Rating:

Year Released: 1978

Zombie Speed: Slow

Cause of Zombie Outbreak: Unknown

Best Zombie: The rifle zombie! This guy takes a rifle near the beginning of the movie and continues to hold it and look into the barrel puzzlingly in the background of almost the entire movie until he eventually trades up to a larger, fancier machine gun.

Most Creative Weapon: The medieval style flail.

Best Death: Blood Pressure Guy! For some reason one of the members of the biker gang just HAS to take his blood pressure in the middle of a zombie horde. It doesn’t end well.

Sub-Genre: Dystopian

Amanda Jean’s Review: Dawn of the Dead is a brilliant film that contains a few of my favorite things zombies, a shopping mall and motorcycle jackets. The idea of having a mall and all its goodies to yourself with only a few others makes the hordes of zombies outside a lot less threatening. This film has likable characters, wonderful gore and hopefully a Cinnabon. This really is a must see George Romero zombie film (well all of them are really).

Matt’s Review: Dawn is my all-time favorite (serious) zombie movie. George Romero created the modern zombie film with Night of the Living Dead and he perfected it here. It manages to convey the utter helplessness of life in the early stages of a zombie apocalypse without making it so dark that it’s hard to watch. The characters feel real and do the best they can to maintain a level of normalcy in a world that’s gone completely to hell. Dawn also marks the introduction to the god of zombie make-up, Tom Savini. If you haven’t seen this movie yet go out and see it before watching any other zombie film (since most every other zombie movie has borrowed elements from Dawn in one form or another).

Don’t worry folks, we’ll get to the more obscure and weird zombie films soon but we wanted to set the benchmark with this one. Up for review next week is the 2004 Dawn of the Dead “remake” so we can compare the two films.

For more info on our ratings system go here.