Dead Rising: Watchtower - O Filme

This latest zombie outbreak movie has a couple run from a quarantined zone after a government vaccine fails to stop the spread of the undead. Survivors try desperately to find a cure, while typical mayhem surrounds them.

This was seemingly based on a video-game. It contains most of the usual zombie action you will have come to expect and really doesn't have too much to differentiate itself from the pack. Tonally it plays things for laughs some of the time but mostly goes for a relatively straight treatment. I suppose one of the most distinctive elements of this one is the running commentary from a newsroom. From here, a survivor from a previous outbreak who wrote a book about it offers his pearls of wisdom to the nation. On the whole, while this was quite a good idea, I never felt it was as funny as it should be. Aside from this, it's business as usual with hordes of zombies rampaging through an infected city, with a small group of survivors, government troops and criminals making up the numbers. There is a reasonable amount of variety to proceedings to keep things interesting enough and there are even some impressive technical moments like the attack around the bus, where a long unbroken camera shot follows the action up, down and over the action. But the film does start to outstay its welcome after some time, not helped by it clocking in at nearly two hours which seemed way in excess of what was needed. Overall, passable stuff but nothing too great either.

At an event where people who have been bitten by zombies are waiting for their anti-zombie injections (which they must periodically take) a reporter, out to make a name for himself in the news business, has an argument with his camera woman over his exploitive and sensationalistic idea of news reporting, and they go their separate ways. She to leave the scene, and he to sneak into a tent to take secret pictures where medical personnel are administering the anti-zombie injection for those who have been bitten. He's present when --for some reason-- the drug does not work and all hell breaks loose. On the run for dear life, he teams up with a hot brunette of the model variety with whom he had an embarrassing encounter earlier to the amusement of his camera woman.

Though this movie is not an "outright" comedy (one with a lot of blunt silliness and slapstick, for example), it is no doubt a horror comedy; played a bit more seriously and deadpan. It has some amateurish flaws of execution, but is more forgivable since it is a comedy and you can't take it seriously anyway. As well, you want to root for people who aren't part of the Hollywood establishment who make a decent effort to entertain you. The main flaw, I thought, was those narrow escapes or close calls where the zombies or bad guys clearly had ample opportunity to bite or do bad things but the would-be victim got away. Some of them doing so after the camera cuts away to another scene during the attack or threat and returns to see them still unharmed.

Nonetheless, this movie is still entertaining and therefore worth your time. Watch out for the live news broadcast with the anchorwoman and her celebrity guest zombie expert. It is reminiscent to me of something you would see on Saturday Night Live, if you ever watched that show. It is well done and funny without seeming to try to be. At the end, this movie seems to promise a sequel. I look forward to it. Love, Boloxxxi.

It would've been difficult to place a whole movie inside a mall and make it interesting enough ... oh wait: Dawn of the Dead already did that and succeeded! Which might have been one if not the main inspiration for the video game "Dead Rising" (there have been a couple of "sequels" to the original game up to this moment).

Like the games you can assume that there will be more movies. Especially if they are successful. The two main characters here are very good looking, which is "dealt" with very early on. A nice touch even if an obvious one. The action is more than decent and the story moves along nicely. Aspects from the game (building weapons McGuyver style) are also present ...

Dead Rising games don't exactly have the most serious adventure or horror story. After all, this is the franchise that has the idea of strapping battery into wheelchair to make an electric battering ram. It operates in this often ludicrous logic, although it also tries to shoehorn a cumbersome amount of narrative and plods the pace in result.

The story follows Chase, an ambitious reporter who is taping in the medical center aid. Zombrex, a medicine to stop zombification, is introduced and administered in this downtown site. Unfortunately, accident occurs and Chase finds himself scrambling to survive and get the word out. It does resemble the set-up of the games as one person is trapped in large setting.

There are multitudes of problem in writing. It may mimic the appearance, but the script is tumbling between comically ridiculous and over-the-top misplaced drama. At one point, it adds military propaganda which contradicts the supposed quirky style. The game itself doesn't venture too much into thriller and this is a movie where it opens with clown zombie, so the drama feels very detached.

Acting is a miss most of the time. There's barely any character worth rooting for as they are either firmly one dimensional or simply annoying. The original hero Frank West is relegated to a crude talk show, but then the movie introduces Dennis Haysbert, a veteran actor to build conspiracy subplot. It's as though the movie takes the combining gimmick from the game too literal and throws tons of ideas to what sticks.

Thankfully, the action is pleasantly done. Cinematography is good, definitely better than most game inspired movie. It often creates fine spectacle, especially in one particular continuous shot. Practical effect and CGI work better than expected as well, delivering dismemberment and bloody scenes with fine commitment. There's more effort invested on the violence than anything, which is fan pleasing, at the very least.

With a stuttering pace and two hours runtime, the movie does feel bloated. However, for fans of horror or the game, there is plenty of gleeful and numbing carnage here.

Movies like this are pouring oil on the "oh-my-god-another-zombie- whatever" fire and also give games based movies a bad rap.

For probably no other reason than pure brand marketing, Dead Rising: Watchtower exists.

It doesn't add anything of significance to overall Dead Rising franchise in terms of story or, well - anything. The thing is, Dead Rising games are dumb, dumb but fun and mostly self-aware of that dumbness and all that didn't translate here very well.

On one hand, casting is kinda OK, acting is mediocre at best, uninteresting at worst. But on the other hand, right from the start we don't quite understand should this be serious or campy fun? It should be campy fun but movie just flirts with that on the surface with easter eggs and few obligatory fan service moments. Mostly it's serious and the story and script are far cry from anything interesting and/or original.

Characters are mostly bland and boring, although Rob Riggle is a good choice for Frank West. Beside him, others are just generic reluctant hero, tough girl and off the shelf villain with a dash of zombies and some government conspiracy stuff. Also, it's funny how most of the characters act totally incompetent for the first half of the movie. Like they came from some la-la-land and not the Dead Rising universe that already had few big zombie outbreaks and people are living with medicated zombies around them.

Now, mediocreness of the story and characterization aside, there is one thing that drove me almost bonkers while watching - photography. Camera shooting style is half way generic-TV-show and half way Michael Bayhem. For some reason there are first person shots from weird angles, like from a weapon's angle or zombie's POV. Which is kind of dumb because Dead Rising is a third person game, not FPS and... it's just looks dumb, okay. That and few other unnecessary camera "tricks" made this movie look like a generic post-numetal video from 2001.

I guess I should also mention zombies, right? Well, there aren't much of those during the movie and when there are, they are mostly generic. There are no zombie herds or such, just a few groups here and there. Sometimes they are fast, sometimes they are slow and clunky, it depends on the script requirements at that particular moment in the story. No rules really. Also, combo weapons and zombie kills are not impressive. But they should be, so there's that also.

As you may noticed, the main word here is "generic" and most of the time Dead Rising: Watchower is just that. Story, characters, acting, script, effects, locations, etc.. they are all in that "passable" realm filed under "W" for "whatever". Camera-work is not though, that could definitely be better.

Overall, I'm giving it a 5 out 10 which roughly translates to "you could watch it but you're not missing anything actually". I would like to say it's a cashgrab but I'm not really sure they'll earn much money with this passable generic TV-like movie anyway. Maybe it'll lead into a new Dead Rising game? At least that would be fun for a change.