mgratk

Who thought Jack Black was a good choice to play Steve? Beyond horrible. Terribly miscast. Still, it's a pretty Minecraft world otherwise, and I did chuckle a few times. Kids who have played Minecraft will probably get a kick out of it-- I used to play it with my kids when they were little, and it was fun seeing a bunch of the game features come to life. I was generous giving it a 6 with a horrible Jack Black effort, but it would be a 7 with a better Steve. Was every other actor in Hollywood unavailable? An unknown actor would have been better. Especially not an old chubby guy(I can say it, I'm old and wide too.) But still all in all a weird, fun, colorful movie.

I understand not having a budget that would allow for more snow to be heaped up, for better CGI to show intense snowfall and raging wind. That's fine. Tell me there's 5 feet of snow and that's OK, I'll go along with it. I don't mind you're low budget. Just please tell me a good story. They have a huge fireplace, blankets, many clothes, unlimited wood all around them outside. Rugs and furniture to burn if they needed to, and a gas stove. But they want to ration their limitless supply of wood well before they decide that there may be something unusual in the snow itself. From there, every other choice is beyond illogical as well. AND it would be literally impossible to become hypothermic with all the clothing, blankets, rugs, mattresses, etc. They could have handled 40 below with a small fire and all those layers and-- blah, I'm done. It was shot well enough, the actors were not great but not terrible. They just had little to work with.

Not a masterpiece. But it has a few funny bits. The best was early on when the sheriff is at the location of a deceased man, and it's a sight gag that you might miss if you look away. There are a few other funny bits and the movie knows what it is and does not take itself seriously. Decent zombies, goofy, and for what it is, in its class, it's a solid 8. Well, what else can I say about it? The effects budget was certainly decent. The characters are stereotypes, but so what? The whole idea of the main male character visiting his sister at work was disturbingly hysterical to me and I'm really out of things to say. If you like bad movies, you'll like it a lot. Even though its on the cusp of just being good dumb fun.