State of Emergency

In Montgomery County, the couple Jim (Jay Hayden) and his fiancée Emilie (McKenna Jones) is ready to go to work when there is an explosion of a chemical plant in the outskirts of the town. Soon Montgomery County is in quarantine and under siege by the army and people turn into zombies.

Jim and Emilie escape from the town, but they have a car accident and Emilie is deadly wounded. They arrive in a farmhouse, but Emilie dies. Jim receives a phone call and a man named Scott (Scott Lilly) invites him to move to the tobacco warehouse close to the house where he is. Jim meets Scott and he introduces his wife Julie (Kathryn Todd Norman) and the unfriendly and weird Alex "Ix" (Tori White). Along the days, they become friends while they wait to be rescued by the marines. Will they survive?

"State of Emergency" is a surprisingly good and dramatic low-budget horror movie. The plot has great character development, good story of sympathy and friendship, but very few zombies; therefore fans of zombies will certainly be disappointed. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Código Vermelho" ("Red Code")

"State of Emergency" is not your average zombie movie. The movie starts out with a fairly good and interesting introduction to the main character, Jim (played by Jay Hayden). However, the movie is fairly slow in pace, and sadly never really picks up and gets into gear.

Now, don't get me wrong, because the movie is not all bad or an entire waste of time. What works out well in favor for the movie is the characters and the way that it manages to build up the relations to the four characters of which the movie revolves.

However, if you are looking for a zombie-fest or gore-show, then "State of Emergency" is a wrong bet to put your money on. As with "The Walking Dead", then "State of Emergency" is a character-driven story, although it just never gets anywhere near "The Walking Dead" effects-wise. I will say that all four people hired for the four main characters did good jobs with their given roles.

As much as I enjoy zombie movies, then I have always had a problem with agile and running zombies, which is what they have in this movie. And why do zombies in low-budget movies always have to make growling sounds like predatory big cats? It is just so stupid.

For a low-budget movie, then "State of Emergency" did a good enough job with what was available, and what they did use worked well enough in favor for the movie. However, it doesn't score high on the zombie ladder in regards of entertainment and enjoyment. There are far worse zombie movies available on the market.

"State of Emergency" is good is you have 85 minutes to spare and got nothing better to watch.

Although low-budget zombie movies are ten a penny these days and, it's fair to say, the majority of them are absolute rubbish, STATE OF EMERGENCY offers something a little different. For a start, it looks like a professional, well-made movie despite the low budget; it has great production values and it avoids being cheesy for the most part.

Of course, there's a flip side to this coin, and the main detraction with the film is that it's incredibly slow. There are lots and lots of long, drawn-out sequences where the protagonist just barricades himself inside a building and waits...and waits...and waits. Some viewers might find this off-putting, although I found that the tension levels were high, which kept me watching.

The acting isn't bad, and pretty good for a B-movie, and as mentioned the technical values are decent. The zombies themselves are fast-moving and ultra-aggressive, much like the ones in 28 DAYS LATER, and the scare sequences are well handled. STATE OF EMERGENCY is far from perfect, and one of the disappointments is that the ending just fizzles out instead of bangs, but in a sea of trash watching it is a nice surprise.

This trash heap of the VERY tired 'zombie' bs was made on a budget, starring NON-professionals, and (s someone who works in the REAL version of this 'let's make a film' business); I'm tired of all these NON-SAG/AFTRA people in front of the camera, asked NON-IATSE behind (what that means is NO ONE involved in this pile of dung has ANY connection with the film business).

The problem stems from the idiotic idea that the 'more (product...i.e., 'films'), the 'better'.

I'm not the only one who grew up (at the birth of cable) with limited channels, but I was thrilled to find an old classic film to watch.

Now, with streaming services up the wazzoo, they act like they need to fill a gazillion free channels, and the only way to do that - on the cheap - is to throw garbage like this in the air.

This dung pile has those typically nauseating opening credits (the king's one sees moorings on YouTube, who doesn't own it and has no legal right to put something on their channel). Yet, they make this big, pathetic opening logo, like your sweet in a genuine film.

So you see some amateur graphics; 'ACME Pictures presents nobody in a film worn by John Doe, produced by John Doe, directed by John Doe...and on, and on...

I only put it on because I was bored for a few minutes and wanted to chuckle.

Just as I thought, this is EXACTLY what I just said; it's some 'film' written by (their last name's) Clay brothers, produced by these identical Clay brothers, and directed by-guess-yes, one of the Clay brothers.

There's NO ONE you've EVER heard of in things like this. It's amateurs from hell. Even worse, EVERY modern American cliché (if you wonder where these 'conspiracies' come from, look no further).

This one goes something like this: an explosion at a(American) military base causes a chemical release of bio-weapons, and these 'bio-weapons' cause the people (always in some Southern state - yuck).

As someone with a brain who's neither stupid nor a citizen of the States, it's VERY sad how far the country's fallen (primarily because of these Southern yahoos) in the past 15-20 years.

So that you know, bioweapons are ILLEGAL (of course, the paranoid idiots who live in the States believe otherwise. I wish post-birth abortions were allowed).

The ONLY countries creating them are the same dangerous group we all know: N Korea, Russia, (formerly) Iraq, etc. Even better, places like Iraq build them illegally and use them as their citizens! Brilliant.

Not.

So, back to the dung; the first twenty minutes of this have virtually no dialogue. The viewer watches some guy with a woman (I'm guessing his girlfriend, etc) 'escaping' from this quarantined area. In our first scene with the hair couple, she promptly dies (bullet wound. He next saw her dragging her body to a horse barn (not begging from knowing about, not caring about the American South, it looks like A VERY well-off privately owned 'horsey hotel'. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it's owned by the Clay brothers, mommy and daddy, and they're just two spoilt Southerners who are starving for attention and think they're film auteurs - they're not, but are too stupid to get two jobs, stop their folks foolishly spoil them-so touching.

Listen, there are many BETTER things one can do than watch stuff like this: paint a wall, read a book, go to the supermarket.

Anything but watching garbage like this.

Before I go, I just wanted to say how amusing it is (and I'm being VERY sarcastic) that this 'non-picture' has NOT one, but three entries into the 'plot' box in IMdB (I put a plot in parentheses because the dolts who write the things in those boxes DON'T know that a plot is NOT what it means when it CLEARLY says 'synopsis' on that box (a synopsis is JUST one, or, at most, two sentences which give A VERY brief overview of the film's main plotline. So instead of simply writing something like 'an explosion at a military base causes townsfolk nearby to turn into zombies', they think the longer, the better (BTW; whenever you see ANYTHING on ANY TV, the little box which tells you about what it is your watching - THAT'S the 'synopsis' box, and the reason SO MANY of these boxes are so filled they end with '...' - which must proper can't click on (their TV), is because of this very reason. One of THE WORST examples is some egotist who calls itself h-gg- I will not give it any more credit. Its main goal is to write novel-length things for EVERYthing.

I'm going to keep this very short as this is the first time I have entered my own review on a film, usually just using the reviews to help me decide whether or not to watch a film, and I don't want to spoil it by giving anything away.

I agree with some of the reviews that there wasn't much zombie action, however, I would mark it up there with the Walking Dead in terms of just the right balance of story vs zombie. For me this was the perfect type of Zombie film as you just never quite knew when those moments were going to happen. Certainly had my heart racing on occasions.

Give it a go - what have you got to lose?? An hour and a half of your time?? In my opinion, it won't be wasted!