Redcon-1

Overlong, laughably bad zombie flick that contains every imaginable cliche associated with the sub-genre.

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.

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

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 :)

I'm reviewing this 25 min into a 2 hour run time. i can't imagine this film will improve within the remaining time left.

the three stars is due to the film having some redeeming features...such as, i would recommend watching this if you suffer from the following - constipation - bound to bore the s*&t out of you illness - you will likely fall asleep watching this insomnia - you will likely fall asleep watching this boredom - will motivate you to find something better to do

the characters are apparently 'acting'? i'm not trained as an actor, so i'm not an expert. there appears to be an unlimited supply of ammo. why just shoot a zombie when you can show off your nemours fighting skills and weapons training.

this production must have been fun for the cast, getting to dress up in military fatigues and carry and fire blank firing weapons without any aspects of any real danger that might be associated with the characters they portray. which is something i have yet to work out.

the production missed a trick. they could have achieved a further star with some gratuitous nudity thrown in???? which is what a lot of low budget films resort to!!!

IN ORDER TO CONTAIN A SPOILER. THERE MUST BE AN ELEMENT OF STORY?