A boring Saturday afternoon had me sitting down by the TV to watch whatever was on, with a lack of anything better to do. This movie just happened to be coming on.
All Soul's Day starts off South of the Border, apparently deep in the past. Evil Man has had his gold stolen by Cowering Man. Evil man kills Cowering Man under the promise that he won't harm his family. Since the man is evil, we already know he's lying. Remember Evil Man's face, because his significance won't be revealed until the last 10 minutes of the movie, as we take a trip into the future, which is apparently still in the past! Here, we are introduced to to a middle-class Caucasian family, which consists of the bigot father, the submissive mother, the typical teenage daughter, and her annoying, handicapped younger brother. They stay at the inn of a rural town (we're still south of the border, and don't expect the setting to change) for the night. The people inside are freaky (a old lady who likes depicting scenes in a cardboard box), and the bigot father literally rents his family a room out himself. The teenage daughter (the only likable character, which is a bad sign for her) goes to take a bath, but is freaked out by something in the bathroom. Upon returning to her room, she is frightened by a young boy in a skeleton mask, and flees the inn, only to run into a crowd of zombies that deliver an undead beatdown.
Jump about 40 or 50 years into the future, and we're finally in a present. An arrogant white guy and his Mexican girlfriend are on the way to her parent's home when they stop in the same rural town and crash when avoiding a crowd of people carrying a coffin. A woman with her tongue cut out flops out of the coffin as the people flee and the arrogant boyfriend goes to get help for her from the flamboyantly suspicious sheriff. Things only continue to get weirder when the couple decide to stay at a familiar inn, with the same strange people inside (the same old woman, depicting another scene in the cardboard box). They decide to wait for friends, but things only get worse. The girlfriend sees a vision in one of the rooms, full of screaming and bloody hand prints, which seems to be the reaction the parents had when their kids went missing, yet it abruptly stops. It's never explained what really happened, or why she had the vision. And you'll find that a lot of things aren't really explained in this movie.
Eventually the two friends arrive, which is a black guy and his blonde girlfriend. Oh, we know how long THEY'RE going to live. They needed someone to kill off in this movie, and unfortunately it had to be the blondes and the minorities.
Not long afterward, the girlfriend is abducted by the townspeople and is being used for a sacrificed. She is saved by the arrogant boyfriend, in which the Sheriff reveals that they must sacrifice a Mexican to stop an oncoming zombie assault. Okay, why they needed a Mexican and how exactly a sacrifice would stop the zombies is never explained (like I said earlier in the movie). The sheriff is finally revealed to be the handicapped son (who suddenly isn't handicapped anymore) of the family that stayed in town so many years ago. Okay, I'm not even sure how to tackle that. There's just too many things wrong with it, that are unexplained. But it doesn't really matter because he's killed off a few minutes later anyway.
So anyways, the zombie onslaught begins and the group of four must now find a way to get out with their lives, after locking themselves in the inn. This is where the ridiculousness of the movie really shines. At one point, while trying to escape, the blonde suddenly transforms from her selfish, bubbly ways and becomes Super Blonde, displaying a sudden zombie butt-kicking power you'd never know she had. Now, this wouldn't be so bad if the movie wasn't taking itself seriously, since the girl is now flipping on rooftops and somersaulting off of zombie's heads, which is comical being such an abrupt and unexpected event. Unfortunately, the movie does continue to take itself seriously, and the ridiculous factor and sudden stupidity of the characters will make you slap your own head as if you just made the dumbest decision in the world (which inevitably leads to the character's death).
It's near the very end of the movie that the story's real plot kicks in, which explains the zombie problem thats been plaguing the town for a century. I'm not going to spoil that, but it is full of holes that are never explained, and it tries to make you feel sympathy for the zombies, until you realize that they've been killing innocent people for no real reason for the past few decades.
This eventually leads to the solution of the problem, which is so ridiculous that you'll wonder why no one had ever done this in the 100 years that the town has had the zombie infestation. Typically, all is well, and the slain characters are not even mentioned in mourning or passing.
The movie may be good for a laugh or two due to the sheer amount of things that can't be taken seriously in it (super blonde being my favorite), but it fails as a thriller. It's plot, while not laughable, leaves much to be desired, and the overall events are just waaaay too predictable. If it's one thing that really got on my nerves, it was the fact that so much was left unexplained.
All Soul's Day starts off South of the Border, apparently deep in the past. Evil Man has had his gold stolen by Cowering Man. Evil man kills Cowering Man under the promise that he won't harm his family. Since the man is evil, we already know he's lying. Remember Evil Man's face, because his significance won't be revealed until the last 10 minutes of the movie, as we take a trip into the future, which is apparently still in the past! Here, we are introduced to to a middle-class Caucasian family, which consists of the bigot father, the submissive mother, the typical teenage daughter, and her annoying, handicapped younger brother. They stay at the inn of a rural town (we're still south of the border, and don't expect the setting to change) for the night. The people inside are freaky (a old lady who likes depicting scenes in a cardboard box), and the bigot father literally rents his family a room out himself. The teenage daughter (the only likable character, which is a bad sign for her) goes to take a bath, but is freaked out by something in the bathroom. Upon returning to her room, she is frightened by a young boy in a skeleton mask, and flees the inn, only to run into a crowd of zombies that deliver an undead beatdown.
Jump about 40 or 50 years into the future, and we're finally in a present. An arrogant white guy and his Mexican girlfriend are on the way to her parent's home when they stop in the same rural town and crash when avoiding a crowd of people carrying a coffin. A woman with her tongue cut out flops out of the coffin as the people flee and the arrogant boyfriend goes to get help for her from the flamboyantly suspicious sheriff. Things only continue to get weirder when the couple decide to stay at a familiar inn, with the same strange people inside (the same old woman, depicting another scene in the cardboard box). They decide to wait for friends, but things only get worse. The girlfriend sees a vision in one of the rooms, full of screaming and bloody hand prints, which seems to be the reaction the parents had when their kids went missing, yet it abruptly stops. It's never explained what really happened, or why she had the vision. And you'll find that a lot of things aren't really explained in this movie.
Eventually the two friends arrive, which is a black guy and his blonde girlfriend. Oh, we know how long THEY'RE going to live. They needed someone to kill off in this movie, and unfortunately it had to be the blondes and the minorities.
Not long afterward, the girlfriend is abducted by the townspeople and is being used for a sacrificed. She is saved by the arrogant boyfriend, in which the Sheriff reveals that they must sacrifice a Mexican to stop an oncoming zombie assault. Okay, why they needed a Mexican and how exactly a sacrifice would stop the zombies is never explained (like I said earlier in the movie). The sheriff is finally revealed to be the handicapped son (who suddenly isn't handicapped anymore) of the family that stayed in town so many years ago. Okay, I'm not even sure how to tackle that. There's just too many things wrong with it, that are unexplained. But it doesn't really matter because he's killed off a few minutes later anyway.
So anyways, the zombie onslaught begins and the group of four must now find a way to get out with their lives, after locking themselves in the inn. This is where the ridiculousness of the movie really shines. At one point, while trying to escape, the blonde suddenly transforms from her selfish, bubbly ways and becomes Super Blonde, displaying a sudden zombie butt-kicking power you'd never know she had. Now, this wouldn't be so bad if the movie wasn't taking itself seriously, since the girl is now flipping on rooftops and somersaulting off of zombie's heads, which is comical being such an abrupt and unexpected event. Unfortunately, the movie does continue to take itself seriously, and the ridiculous factor and sudden stupidity of the characters will make you slap your own head as if you just made the dumbest decision in the world (which inevitably leads to the character's death).
It's near the very end of the movie that the story's real plot kicks in, which explains the zombie problem thats been plaguing the town for a century. I'm not going to spoil that, but it is full of holes that are never explained, and it tries to make you feel sympathy for the zombies, until you realize that they've been killing innocent people for no real reason for the past few decades.
This eventually leads to the solution of the problem, which is so ridiculous that you'll wonder why no one had ever done this in the 100 years that the town has had the zombie infestation. Typically, all is well, and the slain characters are not even mentioned in mourning or passing.
The movie may be good for a laugh or two due to the sheer amount of things that can't be taken seriously in it (super blonde being my favorite), but it fails as a thriller. It's plot, while not laughable, leaves much to be desired, and the overall events are just waaaay too predictable. If it's one thing that really got on my nerves, it was the fact that so much was left unexplained.