Zombie Massacre

I'm a die hard zombie flick fan, and although I prefer the absolute classics and have probably seen every movie belonging to this genre, I will admittedly sit through any mindless zombie movie in the hopes of finding a hidden gem amongst the horrific (excuse the pun) and endless stream of movies that continue to be released that follow the same old plot lines and use the same old effects.

This is my first review, which should give some indication to how much I wanted to express my disgust of this 'movie'. I'm all for the ol' 'biohazard dust storm' storyline that causes every human in its wake to turn into rotting, caniverous corpses (especially those who move extremely fast as opposed to those lurching slowly across fields at a tenth of the speed of any potential victims), but the fact that the plot line is extremely boring, poorly explained, predictable and full of holes is only a small part of the insult of this film, the main being the absolutely horrible acting of EVERY cast member - Where did they find these people???!!!! And the fact that although the majority of the characters are supposed to be allies and mostly American, there would be at least 12 different accents spread over all of the characters!! If your American President cant even have a passable American accent (in this case the A.P sounds Slovakian or at least of eastern European descent) you're really scraping the bottom layer of the bitumen thats underneath the barrel! You then have the secretary of state who starts off with a 'British' accent which even then deteriorates and morphs throughout the film. Apart from the accents, every part and actor is absolutely cringeworthy.... and just when you think it cant get worse...surprise surprise, the characters and their 'performances' become even more appalling.

Even the assembly of so called 'masters of their art' (Bomb expert, 'swordstress', sharpshooter) look as if they haven't even had a minutes' training or any experience in their area of mastery, making even the somewhat essential violence that's really required when making a zombie movie, absolutely comical, ridiculous and laughable in this case.

After having written what I have so far, I'm even starting to regret wasting further time on this abomination. The 'million dollar budget'stated in the fims statistics can clearly be broken down after watching the movie. $998000 has clearly been spent on special effects and making zombies look as disgusting and 'real' as possible (the only tiny amount of positive credit I will pay to this movie) the remaining $2000 was obviously then spent on paying for camera equipment, for the usuage of existing sets, and lunches for the so called 'actors' and crew who were obviously not payed a thing, but rather, gotten off the street, their incentive for doing the movie being lunch each day, and the opportunity to put 'I starred in/worked on a C grade movie' on their resumés....which I'm sure none of them would do, due to the shame of being associated with such a hideous and insulting film.

An abomination of a zombie movie even by zombie movie abomination standards.......

I watch a lot of movies and will usually persevere with most, but I couldn't get past 10 minutes into this movie.

Save your time and money, don't bother with this, its not even B grade, in fact I'm not sure they even have a grade for this type of movie.

You cannot even let this movie run in the background while you do something else, unless that something else involves the use of porcelain and flushing.

Although maybe it could be used as a form of torture or punishment.

DO NOT BOTHER

Hope this saves someone else.

Definition of Apocalypse: An event involving destruction on a catastrophic scale. This movie was destroyed by: 1) A truly lousy script. 2) Acting that was not up to school play level. 3) A director who couldn't remember the few lines he had to "act" 4) Characters that a seven year old could have given more depth to. 5) Special effects that wouldn't have made it into a 70's B movie. 6) A lack of continuity throughout. 7) A last ditch attempt to fix the movie with a semi nude scene. Well it didn't fix it, it just made it worse as it made no more sense than the rest of this truly awful movie.

There was one thing worthy of note and that was the make up. The Zombies did look as though some time and effort had gone into them except for when we got a close up on their hands which looked as though they had come from the local joke shop horror section.

Not so much a B movie, more like a Z movie. Don't watch it, you will never get back the 80 minutes you would waste on it.

As far as zombie stuff goes, I generally eat it all up, raw, pardon the pun here. But more than often the stuff that is released in the zombie genre is something that shouldn't necessarily have had seen the light of day.

As is the case with "Apocalypse Z" (aka "Zombie Massacre"). I can only guess that they opted with the "Apocalypse Z" title because of this summers major release "World War Z", especially if the movie is originally titled "Zombie Massacre".

And as much as people whine and complain about Uwe Boll's movies, then I don't have a problem with his movies, direction or production. However, everyone is allowed a swing and a miss every now and then, and this movie sure was a miss.

The storyline is so simple and non-interesting that it is painful to behold as the cast try to stumble through a script that is founded on absolutely nothing solid or serious. A small town has been infected with some kind of toxin that turned the residents into flesh-eating zombies. And a group of hired mercenaries is sent in to clean up. And that is basically it.

What the movie does have working for it in its favor is the make-up and special effects. The zombies do have some really nice-looking gashes and wounds. That was the best part of the entire movie, sadly so.

There were some really bad mistakes throughout the movie as well. Especially as the mercenaries kept on pointing out that they were low on ammunition, but had no problem squandering it on groups of approaching zombies. And I must admit, that it is the first time in my 38 years to have seen a zombie get hit by an empty metal cannister and fall down (dead?) and stop moving. That was just downright idiotic.

As far as zombie movies go, then "Apocalypse Z" has nothing interesting to offer, unless you enjoy pointless stories, bad dialogue and an overall lack of purpose behind the motivation of the movie.

3 mercenaries and an ex-soldier serving time in prison are recruited (with the promise of money and freedom) to plant a nuke in some place that no one's ever heard of where there has been a zombie outbreak due to government sanctioned experiments gone wrong (probably not news to you, reader). This is the American government and an American operation even though most of the people in this movie, including army and government personnel, are clearly not American. The best example is the fact that the American president was played by a guy with a kind of German accent which made me chuckle for a lot of reasons.

The zombies are fierce and ugly enough, I guess. I've got no complaints there. The fact that the producers could have simply made this movie about some other government operation other than American to accommodate the accents and give it some credibility doesn't even bother me that much. Nor even the cliché and uninventive script and scenario of a bunch of different personalities recruited to do a job. What I most cared about was the action. Good action can save a movie. I've seen it happen. Unfortunately that did not happen here.

The 4 people: ex-soldier (and bodybuilder), expert fighting woman (with 2 swords, no less), explosives expert (gregarious Scotsman) and sniper (French guy with a nose that looks like it's been hit too many times) are not very interesting. None of them were particularly good at what they are supposed to be expert at. The ex-soldier and bodybuilder didn't do too much with the zombies physically. He did manage to shoot a few so I'll give him credit for that....I guess. The expert fighting woman was more interesting when she said nothing. Later she became talkative and ruined the whole mystique by sounding stupid. Moreover, she had no fighting expertise that I could see. I'm fairly certain I (and you reader) could disarm her with a nail file. The explosive genius, who was built up like some kind of Mcguyver, only had plastic explosives with a timer on it which, when it went off, looked little more impressive than what you see when you take a picture with a flash bulb.

All the "explosions" in this movie were like that in fact. Finally, the sniper who supposedly was so good he could shoot a fly on earth from somewhere in space (okay, I'm exaggerating a little) was using a rifle that he had to crank with a big handle after every shot. A process that took about 10 seconds or more. Shoot...crank...aim...shoot, and so on. I'm surprised he didn't upend the thing and start pouring gunpowder down the barrel and then ramming it with a ramrod. Needless to say, reader, about 2 dozen zombies went through his defense every time he cranked. Notwithstanding, I have seen worse (Based on what I've read here some of you may find that hard to believe). I feel 3 stars is just about right. Love, Boloxxxi.