Zombies (2017)

Touches You

Purely Joyful Movie!

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This is at least a solid 5 in my book, I gave it 6 because the average is unjustly low. I was surprised to see it rated so low on average when I checked the imdb site. If you are a horror fan and like zombie movies, it was definitely worth watching.

The film starts in the middle of a zombie apocalypse without any build up or known cause. Luke (Steven Luke) and Tony Todd create a safe house and scout for human survivors. Memorable scenes include kids on a bus and driving a combine through a field of zombies.Tony Todd had a less than stellar role and was rather mundane. Steven Luke didn't exhibit any more life than the zombies. His bath salts joke fell flat. Dialogue was somewhat boring with my favorite character being the old guy sitting on his front porch guarding his beer. The ending has a twist which has been done before and better.Guide: No swearing, sex, or nudity.

What was George Romero's son thinking when he decided to produce this film? The movie was just eh. Definitely have seen a lot worse. Don't expect this to be like The Walking Dead or even George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. I was very excited to see Tony Todd in this. Even him couldn't save the film. The acting was not great at all. The lead actor and the villain was just terrible to look at. Tony Todd was the only decent one. They should have recast the whole thing. As far as the action and the gore goes, they should have cast actors that can actually fight or hire doubles. Or even have the actors go through extensive fight training, like Keanu Reeves in John Wick. You can totally tell the actors in this had no fighting background. They couldn't even hurt a fly if they tried. The people who played the zombies that dies help cover up the lead's fighting and the acting skills. All the zombies that died were a lot better actors than the leads like the zombies in the cornfield, the zombie that fell down the stairs "OUCH!", the zombie that went through the windshield "OUCH!", the tomahawk to the head zombie also "OUCH!", and most of all the combine scene was actually a nice touch. It's like they hired amateur/first time actors but hired professional I'm guessing stunt people. I'm assuming those were real stunt people, right? So, kudos to them! The camera work was decent. The set design was pretty damn good for the budget they had on this. The music however was a bit corny and unfitting to the film. The production could have used more of the money and brought on a composer that knows how to score this kind of genre. Don't expect John Williams or Hans Zimmer style of music or even like Halloween's John Carpenter. The directing in this felt a bit rushed. It's like they filmed this in like 2-3 weeks or something and did everything in like 1-2 takes. For a budget in the million, they could have spent more money on filming. Where did the money go? I'd wait until it comes out on Netflix or something.

This really is the tic-tak-toe of the zombie movie board game arena. It's really Syfy channel standard stuff... well actually its not quite that level and really needs to go up a notch to achieve that acclaim. The major failing here is the script which is corny, stilted and hackneyed. Even Tony Todd can't deliver the lines convincingly and struggles with the dialogue throughout, as does everyone else. I wonder what must have been going through his head while he was performing this one.The plot is almost as bad, and I've no idea what some of the angles are trying to achieve. Generally zombie apocalypse type stories aren't too complicated. The world goes to crap and survivors pick their way through the mess that's left. Some productions deal with this very well and typically there is a breakdown in social order as anarchy through lawlessness prevails. It is tackled here but very poorly and the violence and gore can't compensate for the failing plot.The acting is real low level amateurish standard your more likely to find in home production, though in fairness with such a poor script, I can't wholly blame the actors for an inability to convey their roles successfully. The special effects are real low budget and there is never any real sense of dread or danger from any of the reanimated corpses shuffling lazily around the rather limited settings.The Walking Dead really has done a great job of reviving the Zombie genre, and the producers can be forgiven for wanting to capitalise on that popularity, but this isn't an new perspective, and interesting depiction or even a well executed rendition of a theme that has been well and truly exhausted. This is just another below average production of a horror genre that isn't really worth the time it takes to sit and watch.This one isn't worth the watch your better off seeing one of the older films again for a more satisfying zombie experience.