Rise of the Zombies

Shocker of shockers, this is a piece of crap. I know this news will startle many of you. How could this possibly go wrong, you say? A cheaply produced zombie flick with bad special effects and a cast of has-beens and never-weres? It has classic written all over it. Yet somehow this master formula fails. It would be easy for me to blame the movie's failure completely on the Hollywood Squares cast led by Mariel Hemingway (who, no joke, I thought was deceased) and the now-elderly and overweight Danny Trejo. But the cast is only a symptom of a much larger disease: namely The Asylum, the absolute worst production company in the industry today. Possibly worst ever. They make all that terrible SyFy channel garbage we all watch and hate. It's become popular in recent years to bestow some "so bad it's good" badge upon these movies. That's unfortunate because it just encourages more subpar waste like this is produced.

This movie sucks. Don't watch it.

I rarely write reviews, but this was so bad that I had to write an angry one to warn others that may flip thru the channels and catch this, thinking what I did - "there's some awesome names in this, hopefully this gets better". I was definitely impressed with the Danny Trejo and LeVar Burton being IN the movie, even tickled to see Ethan Suplee, but that enthusiasm died early on in the movie. The acting was absolutely atrocious - these members would randomly be killed and there would be a small, ten-second emotional breakdown, then nothing happened and they just kept trucking on to an ending that made no closing sense whatsoever. Mariel Hemingway was the worst actress I had ever seen and it's unfortunate for her that I had never seen her in anything before, but now THIS is what's ingrained into my memory. I don't know if all that terrible acting was intentional or not, but it completely ruined the movie for me. Then again, as someone else said, this was produced by SyFy so there's an element of immediate shame once an 'original' movie is released by that network. There's not really anything to give away because, well, the movie ended abruptly and will leave you wanting your hour and a half back.

When I saw the SyFy logo I must admit that my hopes and excitement went tumbling down fast, but still I wanted to watch this as it is a zombie movie - and I am a sucker for anything zombie. So I mustered up and sat through this movie, which actually turned out to be a rather nice surprise for a SyFy Channel original movie. So don't let the SyFy logo scare you away from watching the movie.

Sure, this movie borrows heavily, and I emphasize heavily, from the hit series from AMC "The Walking Dead", to the point where it almost becomes embarrassing to watch. But still, for a SyFy movie, then they really went all in with the production of this movie and managed to muster something that is rarely seen from their production line.

The zombies actually looked quite good and had interesting make-up, so it was a nice to see that they had spent some money on make-up and special effects.

There is a handful of semi-famous actor and actresses in the movie, but despite this, then the movie, acting-wise, was nothing impressive, and didn't really manage to rise over mediocrity.

I didn't fully understand the concept of why the zombies in this movie felt pain, it just didn't really work well on any account.

However, in overall, then "Rise of the Zombies" is actually a good enough movie to watch for any zombie fans. It is nothing extraordinary or exceptional, but still worth a watch.

Rise of the Zombies (2012)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Semi follow-up to ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE has a group of survivors living on Alcatraz island but being forced off when the zombies make it through the water. The survivors then decide to try and locate a scientist who they believe has came up with a cure for the zombie epidemic. Yes, here's another one from The Asylum but it always shocks me that so many people go into these films expecting a good movie. I mean, we know their history, we know the film is starting on SyFy yet people still expect to see a George Romero film for some reason. Personally speaking, when I watch these movies I hope to at least be entertained (by good or bad things) or that the film at least offers something you don't normally see. I'm starting to wonder if people go into Edward D. Wood, Jr. films expecting the work of John Ford. Anyways, this film here certainly doesn't offer much that you haven't already seen but for the most part I found it to be entertaining for a couple reasons. One is that the gore factor has really been turned up and it's to the point where these made-for-TV movies are getting away with more than what theatrical slashers could back in the 80s. One sequence shows a doctor ripping off and cooking his own flesh so that he can feed his starving zombie daughter. There's another scene where a woman must perform a C-section to help save a baby but the really outrageous stuff happens after this. There's also the non-stop gore of zombie bites and zombies getting their heads blown off. The story itself offers up a few interesting ideas but of course none of them are ever fully developed. Mariel Hemingway, Chad Lindberg and LeVar Burton are the latest celebs to get down with The Asylum and all three actually turn in very good and believable performances. So, is RISE OF THE ZOMBIES going to make people forget NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD? Not at all but hopefully people won't come to this thinking it's going to.

Was I surprised to see Danny Trejo on a cover of a The Asylum flick. Surely on to pick up I guessed. Wrong. Danny is in it for 30 minutes and he's gone never to see again in this zombie flick.

It starts all pretty well and rather gory for an Asylum flick so I was ready for a hell of a ride, and yes, it was a hell of a ride until the car running away from the zombies crashed on San Fransisco's Lombard Street. Pure CGI and yes, Asylum cheapie. From there on this flick falls down in a lot of blah blah and here and there some zombie attack but from here too the effects of shooting the zombies was done CGI. But it wasn't all that bad, here and there I saw some rather good effects too. But I can't say that this is a must see. It's a mediocre flick for, no pun intended, no brainers. Very simple story and nothing scary or special.

Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5