Rise of the Zombies

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 is a fun trashy apocalyptic B-movie that is just Horror fun in the tradition of old grindhouse films & it also stars Cult Hero Danny Trejo which is the reason i wanted to see this film anyway!!!

Danny Trejo is underused as always? But for the time he's on screen he's Awesome as always & the best character in this cool zombie flick.

Director Nick Lyon later directed the excellent gritty Action Thriller Bullet where he teams up Danny Trejo again but this time in Bullet he gives Trejo the main lead role & it's a great role for the tough legendary Trejo!!!

This is a straight to dvd/t.v film but it's still got some cool scenes & action packed moments & actually some really cool well done practical gore fx & that gives this it's old school feel.

The gore is splattered everywhere & looks great with Awesome looking zombies for such a cheaply made movie.

Rise of the zombies is a good zombie film & definitely one of the better made ones out of the hundreds released every year it seems.

Some gory bits went too far like stamping on a zombie baby's head that was just gross & disturbing.

My main problem is wasting the ultimate tough guy cult hero Danny Trejo by killing him off so quickly!!!!

If you cast Danny Trejo in a zombie film then you use the hell out of the Awesome tough guy & watch him slash & slice his way through the apocalyptic city with a Machete!!!!

There's nothing spectacular about this little zombie survival Horror but that's absolutely fine as this is just an entertaining fun easy watching B-movie starring the awesome Danny Trejo & lots of flesh ripping zombie carnage.

A very good zombie film that although low-budget, uses everything at it's disposal to make it feel apocalyptic & dangerous with plenty of gory zombie carnage & action scenes.

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.

From the very beginning of this movie I found myself wondering about the title of all things! "Rise Of The Zombies." It suggests that the movie is going to be about the beginnings of a zombie plague - how it happened, where it came from. But no. Actually, from the very opening scenes of the movie it seems pretty clear that the zombies have already risen! They're pretty much in control and there don't seem to be all that many survivors. Over the course of the hour and a half, we do find out that it probably started with an infected water system, and that it's pretty recent. One of the characters is pregnant, and she says she got pregnant at a party two months before. So, since people probably haven't been partying much since the zombie plague started, this whole thing must have happened in less than two months. But that's not the focus of the movie. Not at all. Those are just snippets of information that come out. So, yes, strange choice for a title.

With this being set in San Francisco (although the plague seems to be worldwide, or one assumes that there would be rescue missions) what survivors there are have holed themselves up on Alcatraz Island. So that's a bit of a twist: a high security prison becoming a sanctuary. Unfortunately, it seems that even Alcatraz isn't a very secure sanctuary. Every now and then zombies come wading ashore and have to be killed. Now, I've never looked it up, but I assume that the water depth between San Francisco and Alcatraz is more than 6 feet (ie, more than the height of your average human being - or zombie - or it wouldn't have been much of a prison) which suggests that since the zombies don't appear to be the type to enjoy boating they must be able to walk a fair distance under water. OK. Why not. It makes it harder to find a real place of refuge, thus increasing the hopelessness that's always at the centre of a zombie movie.

Aside from that little twist, though, there's not a lot of originality to this. The zombies are zombies. They're the undead, re-animated corpses controlled by a virus of some sort with a taste for the flesh and blood of living humans. Got it. Seen it many times.

The cast features a collection of fairly well known faces, although mega-stars they're not. People like Mariel Hemingway, LeVar Burton, French Stewart. They're all in this. A couple of others. Faces and names you know, in other words. Unfortunately, though many of the faces are familiar, the performances weren't great. Hemingway was probably the most front and centre as a scientist who takes a group from Alcatraz back into the city to try to find the lab where an antidote to the virus was being worked on. She didn't really grab me. Burton was given the most opportunity for a character the viewer could sympathize with. He stays behind on Alcatraz while Hemingway's group goes into the city and others go off in search of rescue, and he keeps two living zombies (or is that a contradiction?) locked up to experiment on as he looks for a cure. The attempted heart-wrenching is that one of the zombies he has locked up is his own daughter. Still, I would have to say that my reaction to most of the cast is that they were less than convincing in their roles; unenthused about playing them perhaps?

So, really, what you have here is a mediocre movie that adds nothing original to the zombie genre, and rather flat performances from the cast. Not a winner, in other words. (3/10)

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.