The Vanguard

In 2015, the world is a chaos. The last known oil fields have been lost to global war, over-population has reached critical levels, food and water is scarce. Anarchy prevails. Mankind is in the verge of a new Dark Age.

During the upheaval, one Corporation has emerged to become more powerful than any government. Its base of operations is a fortified city known as the Red Zone. As the outside world burns, the Corporation implements a depopulation program to cull the human race.

The scientists tasked with the heinous act revolt. The drug they are instructed to develop should pacify and then slowly kill; but instead, the scientists turn mankind into something beyond their worst fears. Out of the darkness a new species has arisen. They are dominant and savage and their number far exceeds what remains of mankind. For the few survivors lost to the wilderness, they are known only as Biosyns.

The lonely Max Carter (Ray Bullock Jr.) survives wandering through the devastated world waiting for Hareem Jabbar (Bahi Ghubril), a man supposed to rescue him. He stumbles in the wilderness with the deserter Jamal (Shiv Grewal) that was tracking him and Jamal believes that he is the antidote for the plague. Then they meet with the scientist Rachael (Emma Choy) and her mate Zac (Steve Weston) and after many problems they walk together to the South escaping from the Corporation and the Biosyns in a dangerous journey.

"The Vanguard" is a low-budget film with a reasonable storyline but poorly executed. The acting is good, but the film seems to be a weak pilot of a TV series, excessively talkative and going nowhere. With a better screenplay, direction, locations and budget, "The Vanguard" could be a reasonable movie. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Vanguarda" ("Vanguard")

I've seen The Vanguard at the BIFFF in Brussels. A got drawn by the Poster 'refreshing, will leave you craving for more' Yeah Right. This film is extremely low budget (there's nothing wrong with low budget films if they're well made, but this one obviously is not) and has the look and feel of a student's project. The idea is OK, but the horror in this is totally absent. THere's no gore either. The one scene where blood splatters out of a guy's chest, it's so fake it's not even funny. The plot is full of holes and doesn't work up to a climax. There's only a flat line. The zombies are unconvincing and confused: do they attack you always, or just when they feel like it? The playground is a field and a couple of hundred square meters of wood. The characters only run around in the wood and go nowhere (just like the plot). This film is a total waste of your precious and expensive time. If you want to see zombies, go see Romero's latest: Diary of the Dead, at least that one is well executed.

OK, I was looking through the DVD's in my local supermarket and 'The Vanguard' caught my eye. So I pick it up, turn it over and read the sleeve. Think to myself: hey, this sounds like it might be a good film.... oh my god!!! I could not be more wrong. In my opinion this film is the biggest pile of steaming boring dull dull dull crap I have ever seen, and I've seen some real crap films. It appears to be a very low budget film, and even though there's nothing wrong with that, it just adds to the cheap mind numbing feel of this movie. If I could, I wouldn't of even rated this movie with the score of 1 - it really is that awful. By all means, make your own mind up, but I seriously advise all to avoid this dross at all costs....you have been warned x

Plot: The Earth is overrun by zombie-like people that reacted badly to medicine administered (or something like that, I can't remember and didn't understand at the time either), one guy runs around Versus style chopping heads and mashing zombies, and apparently his blood holds the key to saving humanity, so he and a few other over-actors try to reach safety to fix the world.

Budget: About $8.50.

What was so horribly wrong then Smart-Guy? To start with the zombies ran just like either gorillas from the Planet of the Apes remake, or the crawlers from The Descent, take your pick. They have little or no makeup aside from messy hair and they snarl a bit to appear scary.

They do the whole "run past the Hero so that he can hit you with the hatchet in a theatrical manner". If he didn't hit them they would simply run straight past with no effect. What kind of attack is that? The acting is abysmal, point blank. I am no master of acting talent, but these guys just suck. The plot is a rip of several other better films, only this movie looks like a student film.

Final Rating – 3.5 / 10. Redefines low budget crap.

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I'm all for people trying something different with the zombie/infected movie, UNLESS it's at the expense of all that is enjoyable about the genre. The Vanguard attempts a vaguely art-house approach, with a contemplative mood, introspective narrative, a degree of quirkiness, and an attempt at social commentary about racism, but offers none of the stuff that usually makes these kind of films fun: gore, excitement, scares, and more gore.

The Vanguard does have a couple of good basic ideas: they're the same ones used for I Am Legend and 28 Days Later, only here they are completely wasted by film-makers with no idea how to turn them into an entertaining movie. The acting is mediocre, the action is dull, the splatter is restricted to some arterial spray (some of it crap CGI), the characters are irritating, and the 'zombies' are very disappointing, loping along like apes, growling like lions, and sporting naff zebra stripes drawn on with face-paint (I realise they're supposed to be like animals, but this is too silly for words).

Somehow, this film garnered some decent comments from Fangoria and Gorezone (who are proudly quoted on the DVD cover), and was selected for the Dead by Dawn horror festival; I'm not quite sure how that happened, but take it from me (and the majority here on IMDb who have voiced their opinion)—The Vanguard sucks, even rivalling The Zombie Diaries for the title of worst British zombie film.