Redcon-1

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.

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

From what I knew of the film I had hopes that it might be an OK movie; even if the budget for it was low as is with a lot of Zombie & Horror films that get churned out. As a person from England I am not used to seeing this genre of film being made over here so, I had hopes that it might be as good as the English Werewolf horror flick, "DOG SOLDIERS." Well peeps! About 5-10 minutes into the movie I completely abandoned all hope of anything remotely scary, horrific or decent being in this stupidly made ZombApoc!

I don't know about you peeps but I am sick of directors trying to stand out to inflate their ego's by completely changing the entire Zombie movements, habbits etc. etc. If you watch a lot of Zombie movies you will know what I mean i.e. zombies that move like Olympic 100 metres athletes and think about what they are doing! Eh? Directors are ruining the zombie world with their hybrid crappy intelligent and athletic undead. The zombies in this were climbing, running, thinking and organising themselves just like uninfected people do. Heck! The infected were all as strong as Poppye the Sailor man and, the bad guy even manages to become strong as the Hulk! It seems to have been made up as it rumbled along and the almost 2 hour running time just made it drag out painfully and dismal.

If only the king of Zombie movie-makers, George Romero, was still with us we could be watching better releases. I'm suprised Mr Romero is not rising from his grave and punishing these untalented directors...especially the ones who remake his older movies and make a right rubbish hash of them!

Is there nobody out there who can put a lot more BITE into the Zombie Horror flicks?

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 :)

This is a B-Movie, to be sure, with the requisite bad acting and feeble effects, featuring "fast zombies", kind of a cross between traditional zombies & 28 Days Later. The trouble was in their inability to keep their zombie lore straight for 10 minutes without changing it around. They were all over the map trying to hit every trope existent without any rhyme or reason to tie them together cohesively. At a running time of 1:55 this was at least 30 minutes too long. Making it shorter could have avoided some of the more painfully indulgent scenes near the end.