Okay, so those of us that love Horror movies: we understand that even the best directors and screenwriters are influenced by the Greats - Fulci, Argento, Carpenter, Savini. What we also understand is that a great Horror movie is more than the sum of it's parts. It's more than in-jokes and snappy lines and `homages' to the above mentioned Greats.
These reasons are exactly why this movie doesn't work.
In a nutshell, this is a movie in a movie - because *that's* never been done before. A group of film-makers attempt to make a zombie movie in an abandoned hospital. Along the way they find an actual corpse, and because every film student knows that using an actual corpse as well as and breaking and entering make for excellent movies, they incorporate it into their film. Because there isn't a brain among them, and somehow the director convinces them that this is what dedicated filmmakers do, they accidentally re-animate the corpse and open a portal to a `zombie' dimension. People die, lots of blood and cranberry sauce gets spilled, and the movie ends without any real resolution.
Somehow, the director/screenwriter, Dave Parker, thought that horror fans would appreciate the absolute littering of obscure names of people in the industry and the constant barrage of scenes ripped off from other movies would make us happy. He got it into his head that we would enjoy watching re-hashed scenes and brain-numbing dialogue. Yes, Dave, I like watching characters doing stupid things because I, like you, have nothing better to do than sit in my mother's basements watching reel after reel of crappy horror movies before dashing off to our jobs at the local video store. Here's a thought, Dave - Horror fans want a movie that's scary, original - and dare I say it - fun! Not some asinine piece of crap jigged together from movies that we haven't seen in 20 years.
Then, because furthering torturing myself seemed like a good idea at the time, I watched the movie again with the commentary track, thinking that I would get some insight into why someone would waste perfectly good film on something like this, and instead I get what amounts to a circle jerk of the stars and the director patting each other on the back.
Pardon me for being harsh.
What I discovered, to my true horror, was that the director intentionally set out to make a horror movie that was bad, and assumed that his savvy audience would appreciate the cheesy lines and nods to the people he was ripping off. There were so many nods, his head was blur.
I generally like movies produced by Full Moon Pictures. After all, they gave us such tongue in cheek gems as PUPPET MASTER, DOLLMAN VERSES DEMONIC TOYS, the beautifully haunting MERIDAN, and my all-time favorite, PIT AND THE PENDULUM, starring Lance Henrikson. There is a difference between an original movie that's corny and fun and a movie that can't distinguish between `homage' and pure cat yak.
Watching this movie is the equivalent to digging out your own eyes with a dirty spoon.
