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snared04
Reviews
Survival of the Dead (2009)
Lost in Translation
If you are at all a fan of George A. Romero's zombie movies, I would sincerely recommend you skip this one altogether. I saw this on IMDb.com a few days ago, and was excited, hoping that it would redeem the series from the awful "Diary of the Dead". In reality, it was, in all seriousness, worse.
The movie starts off decently enough, tying the characters within it to the previous movie, Diary of the Dead. You get almost pulled into the plot, which is basically two warring families on an island, one of which that believes the zombies should be shot in order to protect the living, the other which believes they can either be cured or taught to behave.
However, the plot never really goes anywhere, as it is consistently interrupted by things that make no sense whatsoever. The movie is already full enough of those "why the hell would you ever do that, ever." moments, familiar instances of people doing horrifically stupid things that get them bitten or killed (Very reminiscent of the guy getting his blood pressure taken in the mall in the original Dawn of the Dead, and subsequently getting eaten). But unfortunately, most of this movie is about people vs. people, and most of the people shooting, or getting shot, are live people.
First, when the National Guard members (whom this story is about), arrive at the promised dock that leads to the island, the people leading them there start shooting at them for no reason. You later find out that this expelled family member has been luring people to this dock, robbing them, and THEN sending them on to the island. Wtf. Then, after the guardsmen get on the boat, and all but the leader of the group has been shot or eaten, he jumps on the boat after them, and they seem to have no problem with him being there. OK.
When they get to the island, you discover that the head of the other family has actually been shooting the zombies that he was trying to save, completely nullifying that point of the movie, as well as spending his time trying to teach the zombies to eat things other than humans. Oh yeah, and one of his men shoots at the soldiers, during which the leader takes a bullet for one of his friends, who still manages to die, despite not being shot.
Later on, there's a confrontation between one family + soldiers and the other family, during which family 1 is disarmed by family 2, and then magically regains their guns, and they have a shootout. During this shoot out, the head of family 1's remaining daughter manages to get herself bitten for no reason, both family head's get shot, and most of the family unimportant bit characters are either shot or eaten.
Shortly after that, the zombies seem to magically become interested in eating animals instead of humans, but this is only observed by the man's infected daughter, who never gets to relay the information, because he shoots her to save her the agony of becoming a zombie, and also to address something said earlier about him not having the strength to shoot his only family members to save them. Uh-huh.
None of this matters, as 2 hours later, the remaining members of the original group leave the island anyway, and head back to the mainland.
Mr. Romero, I have enjoyed your movies since I was ten, but I think it might be time to quit.
Jumper (2008)
Jump2d
Here's my impression of how this creative meeting went prior to filming:
-So we've got this idea for a cool movie. -Awesome, what's it about? -Some people who can teleport around, and live cool lives. -Awesome, what else? -Well, we thought we'd have another group hunting them, some kind of secret society. -Sound's interesting, what else? -We thought we'd get Samuel L. Jackson and Diane Lane for a couple of the parts. -Nice, are they in the lead. -Actually, we thought we'd put Hayden Christensen in the lead. -...What?
Or... at least that's how it SHOULD have gone...
The concept of this movie might have had a chance of saving itself from Hayden's spectacularly bad acting, but alas, it was not to be so. The camera work was sub-par at best, and apparently some of Hayden's charm wore off on the screenplay writers as well, as there were more holes in the plot than were jumped through in the movie. Characters moved quickly, and inexplicably through the plot, with little more than a creative nod in their general direction. Nothing about the secret organization hunting the jumpers was ever explained to any extent, and to tell the truth, if it were explained it wouldn't have been as exciting as the movie being over. It even lacked the stereotypical action movie comedic relief.
Sadly enough, with the sheer number of locations, and big names in the movie, they must have spent a bundle of this piece of crap.
Seriously, don't go see this movie.
The Bunker (2001)
Survey says... horror?
I read the cover of this movie and thought that it would be a zombie movie, WWII style, a la Day of the Dead. However... this movie swirled around the deep recesses of the darkness in which it was filmed, only to arrive at virtually nothing.
Throughout the movie, the writers attempt some kind of commentary on the evils of Nazi Germany, but seems to focus on very strange, peripheral evils, rather than on some of the big ones.
Aside from all this, there apparently isn't any kind of creature(s) roaming the depths of the bunker, and all the men that die are at each other's hands, thanks to some kind of hallucinogenic gas in the tunnels.
The ending has the feeling of some kind of "trial by fire", the only problem being that we were never really clearly given the emotional struggle of the character(s).
The best part of the movie was the fact that this small platoon of Germans was played by British actors, who didn't even attempt to hide their accents.
Perhaps not a complete was of my life, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)
Leave the Zombies to Mr. Romero...
I guess to be fair, I have to say that the horror genre has to be the hardest one to do a film right within. Writers/producers/directors must be caught in this conundrum of "do I make a movie with a good plot" or "do I make a movie that scares the hell out of people?" Zombies movies are even harder, as they are definitely in a league of their own.
Suffice to say, I rented this movie thinking that it would be a typical zombie flick, a la George A. Romero and his series of movies that have spanned several decades and several different takes on an undead apocalypse. And was I ever wrong...
First of all, the movie starts off with a promising bit of almost-quality zombie movie footage, complete with an undead ridden hospital, and a military cover-up. However, this is pretty much the high point of the entire movie's action and interesting parts.
For over an hour, the rest of the movie takes its time traveling towards a plot that it never arrives at, and in an extremely uninteresting way. Namely the fact that after the patients get sick, the doctor spends an hour of the movie trying to contact someone to figure out whats going on, only to have that person killed before they can tell them anything of value, save for the fact that they developed an antiviral agent to combat the infection, which doesn't play into the movie at all...
The ending is just as disappointing as the rest of the movie, and features the age old question of "why the hell isn't anybody running from the flesh-eating zombies?" The camera crew reportedly covering this story stands there, laughably, while the zombies close in on them and eat them. Woohoo. Leave the zombie subgenre to someone who knows what they're doing...