Bath Salt Zombies

Dustin Mills' small scale, penniless SOV production feels like amateurish punk rock splatter adoration to "REEFER MADNESS". While its bare-bones technical limitations show, his enthusiasm and ambitions have no boundaries. Luridly trashy with cheap thrills, discount gore, punk tunes and gratuitous titillation, but for such an assembly Mills shows moments of creative style in using experimental animation, slow-mo and camera trickery. There are stylized scenes where the whacked-out visuals (mainly the massacre sequences) look like they have been ripped right out of a comic-book. They do become more prominent the further the film goes along, even the transformation of the central bath salt junkie (Brandon Salkil) over constant use of a newly developed batch of bath salts even stronger than the norm, but with a major side effect; turning users into violent flesh eating zombies. Once the recreational drug has worn off, you return to your normal self, covered in blood, dazed and confused, but your addiction to the substance only intensifies and so does the bloody mayhem.

The concept simply plays around with the Dr Jekyll and Mr.Hyde formula. Even the appearance of the junkie pepped up; large grin, eyes bulging, red face and of the course the wicked laughter managed to add to the craziness. When it wasn't being gung-ho, I found the pacing to stall. Scenes (like with the detective) just seemed to be going around in circles and dialogues (about donuts and good citizens) going through the motions. The payoff does make it worthwhile. At the beginning it starts off with a public service announcement cartoon highlighting the usage of bath salts which was a neat little touch. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of Mills' output after the likes of "EASTER CASKET", "SKINLESS", and this.

This film begins in New York City where a chemist by the name of "Sal" (Dustin Mills) has just made a new batch of the designer drug known as bath salts and given it to a pusher named "Bubbles" (Ethan Holey) to test on the street. Bubbles, being the persuasive marketer that he is, gives a free sample to an addict named "Richie" (Brandon Salkil) with the understanding that if he likes it he can come back and purchase some more. What Bubbles doesn't tell him is that Sal had strengthened the new drug with a powerful chemical stolen from an Army laboratory which also has the benefit of making it extremely addictive as well. In any case, Ritchie is more than happy to try it out and takes it back to his friend's apartment to enjoy. Not long afterward he comes out of his drug-induced stupor to discover that he has blood all over his face and shirt with his buddy's girlfriend lying on the bed partially dismembered and devoured. Yet even though he is initially horrified at what he has done, he still craves more of the drug and rushes to get another sample from Bubbles so that he can share it with some other friends. And then the wave of murders really begin. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film started off relatively well but the low-budget aspects were apparently too much for the director (Dustin Mills) to overcome with the most glaring problem being the audio which was quite erratic in nature. Other major weaknesses included poor acting and extremely bad special effects. And I mean really, really bad special effects. To that extent, other than being used as an example of poor film technique for aspiring directors I cannot recommend this film to anyone and have rated it accordingly.

I'm not really sure what film the other reviewers saw. The movie I saw, for the budget, rocked. Some great performances, good soundtrack, nice direction and good editing. Is it a masterpiece? Nope. Is it blood, gore, drugs and gratuitous nudity. Yup. Can it be mistaken for The Shining or Dario Agento movie? Nope. Can you enjoy the living hell out it? Yup.

Seriously, there was some great writing and performances. For the budget they had, the special effects were fine and inventive. My biggest complaint is that the fight at the end went on for far too long. Outside of that, the lack of pretension that the other reviewers apparently expect in their low budget horror films worked in its favor.

I spent $0.99 to watch this on a Roku channel because who can resist blowing a buck on a movie called Bath Salt Zombies? It's literally the best bang for the buck I've gotten in a long time.

Pretty standard low budget faire with the exception of 2 parts of the film that are worth sitting through the rest of this thing imo, and those 2 scenes adjust my score from a 2 to a 7. Think of this movie as a coconut and you are marooned on an island with nothing harder than the only food source. It's a lot of work but the reward is so tasty... as long as rescue happens sooner rather than later. Surprised this hasn't shown up on Svengoolie or Elvira (they even still on the air?) I wouldn't recommend going out of your way but if you get the chance those 2 scenes show a humor, technical ability, and creativity lacking in the rest of it. If you have seen John Dies at the End think of the scene were the invaders are explaining what their plans are making use of an earth medium (think spiders), like that but better.

How can I describe this with 10 lines of text? Well this movie should never ever been made! Who ever did the special effects should never be allowed to do them again! Who ever wrote this should be banned for life! Avoid this movie at all costs! The actors are just bad! No other words can describe it. The plot is just down right awful! Cheesie comes to mind on the special effects! I can not ever remember seeing worse effects in my life. Haunted houses are so much better than this movie. What is up with the cop? Where did they get these actors from? I have seen some grade school kids act better than these people! It is best if you just avoided this movie at all costs. You will never ever get your time back that you wasted on this movie!