Apocalypse Rising

Total crap movie. Must have used two paychecks from wally world to make this one.

Not quite the styled review as the attention seeker before me, but it is dead on.

Like A Million Ways to Die in the West, Meet the Spartans, and dozens of other campy humor spoofs, this is what I call a college kid movie that anyone with a quirky sense of humor can enjoy. Yes, it's campy. Yes it's silly. Yes it's entertaining, maybe not as much as the ones I listed above, but still fun to watch with your buds.

"Apocalypse Rising" is a mash-up of every sci-fi, barbarian lore, future funk house, b-movie, kitchen sink story imagined between the 70's and now. Obviously though only the moments considered by genre fans to be the epic ones. Wolk clearly lives the life of mixed sci-fi storytelling. Every scene and every word muttered is meant to invoke the spirit of past b-movie , cult classic, drive in movie moments we all fawn over. But you know the saying "If everyone is Han Solo then no one is Han Solo".

The scenes seem stripped of substance , and feel chopped up. There is no real dialog that allows for a natural flow from moment to moment. Each sequence is trying to be as big and as epic a moment as the last, but unfortunately they seem absurdly strung together and the intent gets overpowered by the ridiculous. Not that there isn't some cool, entertaining stuff in this film, "Apocalypse Rising" just demands that you not only suspend disbelief but dive fully into insanity.

The CGI is quality and overall the special effects work in this crazy train ride through time, space, religion, aex, and the zombie apocalypse. I know right!? - all things to make you wanna check it out. The low budget was utilized pretty good which gives "Apocalypse Rising" a better chance at being enjoyable. Oddly enough though, considering how important it obviously was to dance around the porn-parody concepts, I would have found it a better movie if the writer and cast would have went all in.

Overall "Apocalypse Riding" is a full "fence-strattling" situation. The film is so absurd and yet so much....! It will have you shutting down in act one, or awe struck at the screen to the end. Still scratching your head, wondering "is this just bad, or so bad it is so good". Clearly no one involved was afraid to color outside the lines.

When I wrote this; the genres were still not defined on IMDB (under the title, as usual), so I guess that you will be more guided than me. But, though being caught "off guard", I immediately adapted and tried to enjoy. Unlike another lame zombie-apocalypse crash, for me it was much more - too interesting and rich in many 'max-mad' aspects. In short: eclectic modern and extreme parody. I believe actually beneath driven by real current extreme religious, political, radical and other global discords. It was loaded with strong comedy elements wrangling around from the very beginning. It scratched a loads of popular elements of Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres (in more then simple and funny context, given a quite crazy story) like: apocalypse, zombies, 'mythical' heroes/warriors (inter-stellar and tattooed, please), secret cryptic passages, puzzles, The Chosen-Ones, occultism, so forth so on. All mixed to the extreme! So, the script is a piece of work, giving here a credit to the author. Funny but (quite!) sick business it all is... It gave me a nice laughing on regular basis, going to the campy (literally intentional "too-much") extremes from "fierce / in-depth" story-lunacy to vicious character-ignited humor and more-then-morbid moments. I'm serious here: there are "too-much" (as simply put above, just: Sick) moments, so 18+ is suggested, 'cause there's more then freakish rock & you-know-what elements.

I mainly wrote this because my first thought after watching this glorious mess was that whether or not it was trying to be ironically terrible, it was still better than Fox's last Fantastic Four movie - I would rather have given someone that $20 to kick me in the groin repeatedly with a boot covered in syphilis riddled rusted razor blades than to the theatre I paid to take in that steaming pile. I gave this a 2 because it provided mild amusement that I loathe myself for. I couldn't tell if this knew it was horri-awful, and was going for that, but it certainly was, and definitely got there, intentionally or not. I think this would be a real beauty on a night where you look to set a personal best in edible dosage.