Platoon of the Dead (2009)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

OK, did they just pick up some uniforms at the Army-Navy store? Because "Private" Dillon (Tyler David) has a gold leaf on his BDUs!I guess they got the guns at Toys R Us because that is what they looked like.The Lieutenant (Chris Keown) is in bad need of a shave and a haircut. I mean, come on, shoulder length hair on a soldier!The only actor with any resume in this film was Ariauna Albright. She is not particularly noteworthy, but did lead me to two new films of interest: Caged Lesbos A-Go-Go (with Lloyd Kaufman as President Obama), and Vaginal Holocaust (Rape, Revenge, Hicks, Vampires and a Man-Eating Vagina!) Can't wait for those!War film buffs will find this ludicrous. Zombie buffs will find it boring.

I'm a huge zombie movie fan always on the lookout for some unexpected hidden gem. This is not one of those. In fact, it's awful! Set sometime in the near future, the world has apparently been overrun by zombies and there's some kind of war going on between humans (who use some kind of advanced laser gun that dissolves zombies) and an intelligent and evolved "platoon of the dead" zombie army (who use a special laser gun that stuns people). Since this is a low scale, no budget flick shot on a low grade digital camera, the "war" basically amounts to a couple of guys dressed in camouflage running around in the woods. The most zombies ever seen on-screen at a single time is about six and that's at the very end of the film, so no actual threat for humankind is ever adequately established.Inept, cowardly young soldier Private Dillon (Tyler David), obnoxious, sadistic Sergeant Butler (Tom Stedham) and their level-headed superior Lt. Roberts (Chris Keown) are the only three survivors after their squad is ambushed by the zombie soldiers. The three end up at a remote country home and discover three women; Heather (Ariana Albright), mute Jill (Amanda Bounds) and slutty Stacy (Michelle Mahoney), are hiding out there. The ladies behave strangely and secretive, but allow the guys to spend the night in exchange for an escort to a military safe point the next morning. Despite the war angle, it amounts to little more than yet another substandard revisit to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD territory but with the addition of some silly supernatural elements that don't come into play until the last 20 minutes. Usually a virus or scientific experiment gone awry gets the blame for zombie epidemics in these kind of movies, but here one of the characters claims it happened because of a OUIJA board (!?) Toward the end it's also revealed that someone is a demon and someone else is a savior the zombies want to protect and we quickly watch as something cheap and badly made becomes even worse by becoming something cheap, badly made and needlessly muddled.The acting here is truly abysmal, even for the budget. Of the six main actors, only two of them are passable and one of those two is the mute girl. There seems to be an attempt at dry humored dialogue but none of the cast members are talented enough to deliver it for the desired effect. Not only is the acting and much of dialogue awful, but the film doesn't have nearly enough action (there's way too much talking), the characters do extremely idiotic things throughout (instead of locking a door they just let a zombie come inside and then scurry around the house looking for a hiding place!) and the presentation of the special effects (from the zombie designs to the laughable computer fx) is extremely weak. It's basically just an amateurish waste of time.

Sure this was a bad movie but it was watchable. The plot, despite being as thin as buttermilk to start with eventually curdled into an intriguing idea. And for that reason alone it was worth watching. With some development I could imagine a series of kick-dead-ass movies based on the premise. It's undeniable that it was all over the place in the acting, filming, score and direction but it was sort of like a twisted "Dog Soldiers" (maybe). The plastic guns and Star Wars type lasers didn't detract from the movie. The long-haired captain was interesting as were the others. Basically, think Ed Wood and you won't be far wrong, although in PotD the sets weren't cardboard.

OK, I love zombie movies. I also don't understand how "movies" like this get their space on IMDb. I am sure i can have my family Christmas movies rated here as well (they are MUCH MORE entertaining than this). Honestly, I saw the first 10 minutes of this movie and it was a torture. OK, about the acting - DUH - at least pretend that you're faking some emotion when you see a guy dying. I would give that soldier an Oscar. Seriously. Why? Just because. It's a crazy world, anyway, so what the hell...I've never seen anything worse in history of movies, maybe that's why...Then the FX. After effects, quickly generated effects that don't even follow the camera movement properly. Lol...Guns are plastic toys shooting laser beams that are not even close to 197? Dr. Who's. And the, the MUSIC! I can't even describe that annoying, almost funny, trumpet-like sound that plays while they are marching through the zombie-infected forest. It is so '40's and it fits in there just like the funny bluegrass tune fits into the original '2nd house on the left'. (that is the only comparison, though - '2nd house on the left' was a good movie). I don't know what else to say. I am sorry that I wasted 4 minutes of my life writing this review.