Terror Z

This was a film I was willing to give a chance, but like most low budget films in this genre it fails beyond belief. Think a low budget '28 days later' with splatters of 'World war z', but on a much smaller scale, a waaaaaaaay smaller scale. The intensity and ferocity was there, but it was obvious the budget didn't allow for much. The 'infected' appeared to be dressed by some wannabe costume designer, who for whatever reason decided to dress all the infected in the same tattered clothing. The film featured a pretty good young cast which included Sarah Butler from the 'I spit on your grave' remake. The saving grace to the film if any was the performance by Kayla Ewell, who seemed to be the only one who took her role serious. Again on the subject of budget, it was obvious the producers couldn't afford karo syrup and red dye number five because it was a near bloodless film. So don't be fooled by the DVD cover, you'll be greatly disappointed if you're expecting a gorefest. Lastly, the ending, believe me when I say this film has one of the most dumb and confusing endings in the history of horror films. I don't know what else I could say about this film without reviewing it with spoilers, but since I'm never the one to divulge spoilers, I'll leave up to you to decide if you wished you De-rented the Demented.

"The Demented" is sort of a reminiscent of a lower-budget version of "28 Days Later". So is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well that depends on what kind of zombies - or infected - you enjoy in movies.

Story-wise, then "The Demented" is a very standard movie as movies go in the zombie genre. A group of young people find themselves trapped in a rural setting when a biological outbreak takes place - turning people into crazed killers. And I would use the term zombie loosely here, as they aren't exactly zombies, if you measure them up by the standard of many movies in the genre.

The infected in the movie, like in "28 Days Later", are agile and fast running. And for some reason they have to make sounds like prowling animals. And also, once you become infected, your clothes become shredded and ripped. Try looking at all the infected, their clothes is all torn and ripped, and they are smeared in blood, yet they don't have any visible cuts, wounds, bite marks and the like. It was a little bit too ridiculous.

The way the movie ended was actually a nice twist to an otherwise generic zombie movie. I will not spoil anything by mentioning it here, but I didn't see that ending coming, not by a long shot.

As for the title of the movie, well, they could have found something more appropriate, as "The Demented" doesn't really do a zombie movie any kind of justice in any possible way.

For a zombie movie, then "The Demented" didn't really bring anything new or innovative to the genre. Everything in the movie has been done or seen before. But still, the movie was enjoyable and actually fared well for a movie of this production value.

I wanted to like this one, I really did. But when they make characters so stupid, or annoying that you want them to die, I don't think the writers did a good job. A good movie will make you feel bad when people die, not cheer that the annoying girl has died. This is one of those movies that really annoys you when they make bad decisions. I get maybe they didn't realize they were going to be in a zombie movie, but screaming and making as much noise as possible all the time is never a good choice. Walking down the middle of the road isn't smart. When in a town of zombies, you don't walk into new buildings screaming hello for example. The girls have to scream and cry at every possible instance. Half their lines are screaming the second half of the movie on.

I don't know what to think of that ending, I'll give it credit for some out of box thinking.

In the end, this wasn't a total waste, but it felt like it could have been more. It has most of the generic characters and generic scenarios you would expect, except for the ending.

I have to give the first positive review for this film because the ones available at the moment are terribly close-minded and harsh. The consensus of the current reviews bitch and moan about the ending, which I felt, was incredibly realistic. I actually found that to be a quality most likable about this film is its ability to be realistic for such a low-budget zombie film. By realistic, I mean that the characters are relatable when it comes to their reactions and their fates. They make choices and they die like one actually would given there be a zombie apocalypse. It is difficult to write a zombie film that stands out anymore due to our zombie obsessions. That being said, sometimes its fun just to watch a film that portrays that very situation, play out naturally without there being something totally new and never-before-seen. CHILL OUT people!! It's a low-budget zombie film! I don't know why people expect so much from films, especially the low-budge indies. If you're not pretentious and/or jaded, but you like a fun zombie apocalypse film, then you will probably have a fun Sunday afternoon watching The Demented. Plus, let me just point out that the zombie sleeping thing was incredibly creative and really very creepy in my opinion. That was a super cool new zombie characteristic, mad props to the writers on that.

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'The Demented.' The latest in a seemingly never-ending line of zombie films. Only the monsters aren't zombies - they're more the 'infected' that we've seen before in 28 Days/Weeks Later or the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. Both films were great successes, but, just because you have 'running zombies,' doesn't guarantee you an automatic hit.

Perhaps the main problem here are the characters. Okay, this is a horror film and no one's expecting deep and meaningful character developments with watertight arcs etc, but, both Dawn of the Deads, 28 Days/Weeks Later and others like them, proved that just because your heroes are getting chased by zombies, doesn't mean you can't give them some decent traits to make the audience relate to them.

In The Demented we have six friends. Let's call them, 'Attractive Blonde Female, Attractive Brunette Female, Attractive Mixed-race Female, Attractive Dark-haired Male, Attractive Blond-haired Male and Attractive African-American Male.' For that's all they are - we never really learn anything about them, so we don't really care when they start getting chewed up one by one.

And there isn't really that much gore. I know this is a cheap film, but a bit of entertaining mayhem might have given it a bit more of an edge. So our six generic protagonists get caught up in a zombie outbreak. How does it happen? Does it matter? Do you care? They just do. So they're chased continually, in between sneaking here and there while the zombies are 'sleeping standing up.' Whatever.

If you've never seen a zombie movie before (there must be one of you) then you may actually enjoy this. Or if this was made all those years ago before Night of the Living Dead, it may even have been called 'groundbreaking' and 'a classic.' However, it wasn't. And there's absolutely nothing here that you haven't seen before. If you like zombie films (or running zombie films in particular), stick with Dawn of the Dead 2004 or either 28 Days Later film. Both have budgets, gore, suspense, action and decent characterisation in them. The Demented has none of those, sadly.