Dead Genesis

I was so looking forward to this. I had been following its production, reading the blogs and visiting the movie's Facebook page. I really wanted it to be good.

Most of it seemed to have been shot in the same clearing by the side of the road no matter where in the woods it was supposed to have been. The bartender's voice was ADR'ed - badly. The lips were in sync but no attempt was made to duplicate the acoustic space the other actors were in. I am all for zombie whores but why did they have clothes on? If you are going to use a zombie as a sex machine, cut its arms and legs off and put its head in a box don't just chain it up. The head shots were CG blood spatter and it was obvious.

I give the zombie makeup a B+ rating. Most of the close up zombies were really well done.

Above all else, it was boring. They don't have a FinalCut filter for bad acting.

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.

after an original, but very gross opening sequence, wont spoil the movie but it made me watch the rest of it, the camera shake starts, if it was all supposed to be shot by the reporter it would be almost acceptable, (but any one who shakes that much would have big problems), the camera shakes even when the reporter is not filming which really does get annoying.

the story itself isn't to bad and the acting is above average with most of the key characters being very good, the zombie effects are good, the gore levels are not excessive, but wont disappoint.

this film would have scored higher, but for the camera shakes this would have made a 7 or 8, if you can put up with the camera shake (warning, it is very close to headache/vomit inducing), this isn't a bad zombie movie & is well worth a watch

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.

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.