Zombies

I like Zombie movies and when I saw this one had a 7 review I figured I'd give it a try.The acting is horrible. Some people have no business acting, Steven Luke is a prime example. He stumbles through his dialog like some kind of Zombie himself. No sense of timing at all. The FX in this are standard low budget digital crap and the makeup seems to be anemic for a zombie film. I really had to give it a 1 because it really deserves way less than a 7. My honest rating would be a 4.5 out of 10.

This is the kind of bad that causes embarrassment for the viewer on behalf of those that are acting in it. You can't watch this without wincing at how bad the acting is and wondering what the 'actors' are thinking while they are wandering around trying not to bump into the furniture or look at the camera. I only watched it for 5 minutes but it is 5 minutes I will never recover. Whoever gave this a 10/10 needs help.

A survivor of a virus outbreak goes about finding more uninfected people to come to his sanctuary.

Director/writer Hamid Torabpour offers a competent low budget offering, with plenty of kills, CGI blood, hacking and shooting as survivors take down the zombie-like virus infected hordes. It's played straight, the music, lighting, make up and locations add up to a solid enough production. While it bogs itself down and runs out of steam in the latter half Torabpour still puts in a nice little nihilistic twist in the closing.

It's not a found footage type film like Zombie Diaries or Diary of the Dead. Zombies is an average low budget flick but sadly lost in the sea of substandard DTV zombie film hell. Produced by Cameron Romero (son of the late George A. Romero) it doesn't reach the heights of his father's work or the likes of The Dead or The Battery but thankfully this digital presentation has an almost film like feel appose to the abundance of bland camera work on VOD and SyFy that lack atmosphere.

Veteran horror actor Tony Todd bookends with a welcomed extended cameo as Detective Sommers. Lead Steven Luke's Luke plays the subtler scenes well rather than the action segments. Notable is Amanda Day as Tala but most memorable is Raina Hein's Bena. Despite sporting a zombie cliché killing weapon of choice bow Hein makes the most with what's she's given and offers much of the emotional clout.

Overall, looks good for the budget, don't expect a classic and you may enjoy.

What was George Romero's son thinking when he decided to produce this film? The movie was just eh. Definitely have seen a lot worse. Don't expect this to be like The Walking Dead or even George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. I was very excited to see Tony Todd in this. Even him couldn't save the film. The acting was not great at all. The lead actor and the villain was just terrible to look at. Tony Todd was the only decent one. They should have recast the whole thing. As far as the action and the gore goes, they should have cast actors that can actually fight or hire doubles. Or even have the actors go through extensive fight training, like Keanu Reeves in John Wick. You can totally tell the actors in this had no fighting background. They couldn't even hurt a fly if they tried. The people who played the zombies that dies help cover up the lead's fighting and the acting skills. All the zombies that died were a lot better actors than the leads like the zombies in the cornfield, the zombie that fell down the stairs "OUCH!", the zombie that went through the windshield "OUCH!", the tomahawk to the head zombie also "OUCH!", and most of all the combine scene was actually a nice touch. It's like they hired amateur/first time actors but hired professional I'm guessing stunt people. I'm assuming those were real stunt people, right? So, kudos to them! The camera work was decent. The set design was pretty damn good for the budget they had on this. The music however was a bit corny and unfitting to the film. The production could have used more of the money and brought on a composer that knows how to score this kind of genre. Don't expect John Williams or Hans Zimmer style of music or even like Halloween's John Carpenter. The directing in this felt a bit rushed. It's like they filmed this in like 2-3 weeks or something and did everything in like 1-2 takes. For a budget in the million, they could have spent more money on filming. Where did the money go? I'd wait until it comes out on Netflix or something.

I'm a huge fan of Zombie movies. Zombies was brutally bad. I was only able to get through 25 minutes of the movie before having to turn it off. It was a waste of time and money.

The worst part was the script. It's what you would expect if a 2nd grader wrote a zombie movie. The script was very predictable and cheesy. None of the cast was very convincing. It felt like acting from a local play.

I've seen higher quality videos and production with an iPhone. The video and makeup quality were lacking. Needless to say, it seems like they were on a very tight budget.

Bottom line...Save your money and find another film to watch.