Dead Genesis

I was rather excited to stumble upon the "Dead Genesis" DVD in a secondhand store, as I had planned to purchase it from Amazon. So I picked it up, believing I had made the bargain of the month. Especially the tag-lines on the front cover were enticing: "the must-see indie horror film of the year" and "Romero would be proud".

Romero would be proud? Of this movie? I find that very doubtful. The movie reminded me of something I would have been able to make with my own JVC Everio G GZ-MG130 camcorder. The movie was just one major shaky camera experience. I am sure that some people like these "documentary-like-do-it-yourself-with-a-shaking-hand" kind of styles in movies. But I don't! It gives the movie such a lousy feeling, a feeling of something very amateurish and homemade. And this shaking camera thing, the director thought was the right way to go, was initially what made me turn off the movie about 1 hour into it.

The story in "Dead Genesis" wasn't that bad actually, but it was far from the best and most compelling storyline in a zombie movie though. However, the movie was plagued by some really questionable acting performances. Now I am not saying that everyone was bad, far from it. Most people actually did good jobs, but there were a handful of 'actors' in the movie that were so bad that I sat and wondered how they made it past the screening process. Perhaps they were friends with someone in production? Especially that soldier guy on the pickup truck, who was shooting zombies. Wow, that was without a doubt the lousiest acting performance I have ever had the unfortunate pleasure of beholding.

"Dead Genesis" does have a fair share of blood and gore, which is what makes it almost worth to sit through the movie for. Almost! The zombie make-up was adequate, some painfully fake prosthetics here and there, but overall fair make-up and effects on the living dead. One of the better things in "Dead Genesis" was actually one of the first scenes where as woman was gorging on the entrails of a child. That scene was actually the one thing that stuck with me after turning off the movie after 1 hour.

Normally, I rarely turn off a movie before it is ended, so a movie have to be really, really boring of uninteresting before I do that. And being the zombie aficionado that I am, I have to say that this movie was bad, even for low-budget zombie standards.

It is now standing on the shelf of my DVD collection, bagged and tagged, and I know it will never get picked again and put into the DVD player. Not worth the effort, sadly.

Another rubbish no-budget zombie film that makes you wish that the genre had died a death for real. This one tries a slightly different approach to the genre than usual, which means we get some harmless and over-obvious philosophising and moralising along with the cheesy gore effects and repetitive zombie attacks. But whatever way you look at it, this is a mindless shot-in-the-woods outing no better than the equally poor NAZI ZOMBIES.

The slimline plot sees a would-be reporter infiltrating a group of zombie hunters who are camped out in the local woods. These guys call themselves Dead Heads, which I thought was a nickname for fans of the EVIL DEAD movies, which gives some inkling of the paucity of imagination on offer here. What follows is badly-scripted, with flat, boring characters every which way you look, and "direction" which consists of somebody shaking the camera about in a cinema verite style. Don't get me started on the amateur hour acting or other poor technical qualities; instead, skip this one entirely and try something else.

I saw this at the local shop and thought it looked good. First thing I noticed is the movie's look is nothing like the images on the back of the box. It is almost as if they photoshopped it to look edgier and hide the fact it looks like a very poorly made home movie.

The audio is poor. It doesn't sound right, it's not synced. Some of the voice acting (especially the barman) is painful. There just isn't anything good to say about the sound quality.

Visually the movie looks exactly like something some kid's made on a camcorder. I wouldn't mind the amateur colour and lighting. That's OK but what's really annoying is the excessively shaking of the camera. The idea behind the story is that a woman is following around some undead hunters to make a propaganda video to support the war on the dead. So it's like they want to really shove it in your face that this made on a camcorder and the camera shakes far too much. It's like they hired a drunken crackhead to film this.

The act is even worse. It's not really worth talking about. If you have a puppy and he's a bit slow in the head I would imagine he could still do a better job.

The action is non-existent. There are a couple very tame scenes at the beginning where zombies are shot. But the rest of it pretty much them sitting in what appears to be the same field (or the bar). You'll consider yourself lucky when you then get to see the very rare poorly done tame zombie shootings later in the film.

You'll see better entertainment on Youtube for free. I would thoroughly recommend forgetting this movie even exists.

While I commend a very low budget Canadian production for actually getting distributed, and I can over look most production issues due to shooting on a shoe string (been there).

I couldn't watch more than 25 minutes of this movie due to shaky cam syndrome. It was like watching a video shot on full zoom, held with one hand.

I watch movies on my 80" projected 16x9 screen and the excessive shaky cam look made me ill. (SCS seems to occurring more and more in low budget productions lately. Very sad.) Unfortunately the above issue didn't allow me to see enough to critique plot/acting.

This movie is about the only zombie movie I've seen that looks at what a zombie epidemic might be like for the survivors.

A lot of the criticism here is justified - no one in this movie was in any danger of winning an Oscar. The effects are ehh. The gore is ehh. There are a couple of scenes of children dying, including one being eviscerated by a zombie. And I can't imagine why they did whatever they did to the bartender's voice. This is not a movie that was made to be enjoyed with a bucket of popcorn.

But it's also one of the few movies that takes a look at what it might be like to survive in this world, and what it might do to your humanity. The Deadheads aren't good guys. They aren't heroes killing zombies in a video game. The leader sums it up in my personally favorite scene: "I fight to kill the pain inside. But you know what I'm starting to figure out? It still hurts when I wake up every morning."