Redcon-1 - Army of the Dead

Watching the "premiere" of this indie zombie film, I had initially had fairly high expectations, given the amount of marketing that has gone into promoting this film. What I actually found was far less. Here we have a classic silhouette of the ever popular 28 Days Later but with a twisted storyline that makes no sense whatsoever. The characters were identified but the continuity lost itself half way into the film. Given a stronger storyline and direction that leads the audience to several important plot points, this could have been a big hit worldwide. The only noteriety attached to this film is actor / producer Carlos Gallardo who has a verifiable link to Hollywood director Robert Rodriguez who brought us titles like Desperado, Once Upon A Time In Mexico and From Dusk Till Dawn. This is paperweight and fails to compensate for the lack of story, continuity and true to life action that this film sadly does not deliver.

I'm a huge zombie movie fan but even I recognize that the whole sub-genre is saturated and there are some real stinkers out there at the moment. Sadly Redcon-1 certainly comes under that category.

It tells the tale of a group of soldiers sent into the "Quarantine" zone to retrieve a person of interest. The rest, pretty much writes itself and is a mixture of generic and really quite terrible.

The zombies aren't your traditional type, in fact they aren't even your modern sprinting kind either. Here you'll see the undead doing everything from wielding weapons, communicating with one another and even sitting watching porn (Not joking). They truly are some of the worst zombies I've seen on screen.

The cast are your usual rabble of stereotypes and are so generic they could have interchanged some cast members mid film and I'd not even have noticed. The leading man is the only one who delivers, and that's only noticeable because of just how bad everyone else is by comparison.

The film has real video game influences, the Telltale Walking Dead and Dead Island clearly had something to do with it both in content and musical score. That worked really well to be honest, but not well enough to turn the movie around.

Interestingly the movie gets better the further in it goes, in fact by the end I kind of felt a bit bad giving it such a low rating. Make no mistake however even near the end there are some truly moronic moments.

Not the worst out there, but still pretty dire. With a better writer (And cast) this perhaps could have been something bearable.

The Good:

Great influences

Nice score

The Bad:

Worst.....zombies......ever

Awful characters

Plot is a disjointed mess

Far too long

I was surprised by the plots a couple of times during the movie wondering why the story would develop in such a ridiculous way. Two of the soldiers fell in love during the mission? The captain recalled his dead wife while playing with the little girl on the beach? The plot seems to be developing in a random and uncontrolled way. Several people left the cinema before the end.

Given the word I had heard about this zombie film, I was disappointed with the execution but - being a fellow creative - I don't want to dwell on the negatives so will get those out of the way early on before concentrating on what was done well.

1. Acting / characters: The acting was not good in this film. Some of the dialogue was both clunky and cheesy. I found myself not really knowing much about the characters and - as a result - I didn't care about them.

2. The run time: The film was way, way, way too long. At least an hour too long. It was action scene, zombie stuff, internal conflict with the soldiers, repeat the above for over two hours. None of the action sequences brought anything new to what you were watching so - when you saw the first one, you'd pretty much seen the rest of them.

3. Script / Plot: Nothing we haven't seen before but not as executed as well as it could have been. It needed tightening and some new twists (other than a "twist" at the end which just missed the mark by a mile and infuriated me). It appears to have taken bits from your favourite zombie films, mashed them together and executed them in a poorer style.

That's the negatives.

The positives.

1. Action is hard to direct and I've seen many directors who are at the top of their game fluff this. But it was clear to see what was happening, who was punching who and with little motion sickness (some go way overboard with shaky cameras in other films but not this one). It was shot well.

2. The score was good for the material they had to work with. Had the script been tighter, there could have been some powerful scenes with the added music.

3. For a low-budget film it looks great. There are a couple of dodgy effects which people laughed at (knees getting shot for example) but - overall - it would stand up well next to high budget films...

Last comment: style over substance. Had it not been so long, it could have been an average film but... The running time and other issues killed it for me personally. Give it a watch though and make your own mind up :)

Just wasted a lot of time watching this absolutely boring film, predictable, bad acting, could go on but as I say wasted enough time, just bad. Bad.