20131013: Horror Review--The Dead Undead

The Dead Undead

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, released 2010, rated R, 93 minutes, horror, action, SciFi.
2. IMDB:  3.1/10.0 from 613 users; estimated budget, 1.1 million USD; aspect, 1.85
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 13% from 325 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.6/5.0 from 95,582 users.
5. Directed by: Edward Conna and Matthew R. Anderson.  Written by: Edward Conna.
6. Starring: Edward Conna as Doc, Luke Goss as Jack, Cameron Goodman as Summer, Johnny Pacar as Travis, Matthew R. Anderson as Viper, Spice Williams-Crosby as Gabrielle, Josh Alba as Curtis, Laura Kenley (Chinn) as Megan, America Young as Shelley, Luke Lafontaine as Aries, Lance Frank as Lance, Billie Profitt as Lance's wife, Vernon Wells as Raleigh.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Curtis, Travis, Summer, Megan, and Shelley arrive at a motel after a long warm drive in crappy truck.  They all want to check in and takes showers.  Trouble is, there is no management present.  After a bit of a wait, they pick out rooms.  A child vampire almost lunches on Megan, but the others intervene.  Megan freaks out, but a shower and clean clothes fix it.  Shelley freaks out over a mouse in her room.


2. Summer watches (peep hole in the door) two vampires duke it out.  Travis shoots some zombies.  Megan turns after a couple of hours, and Curtis gets mauled by a zombie.


3. A van runs over one of the zombies, then people (perhaps) with guns come out of the van: Jack, Gabriella, Aries, Doc, Viper, and a couple more.  They proceed to mow down a couple of dozen zombies.  They encounter Lance, who manages to convince them he's not infected.


4. "Relax honey, we're the good guys."  Comforting words.


5. Zombie-Vampires (ZVs) are explained.  They are hard to kill at night, but die in the daylight.  The zv are fast, as opposed to traditional zombies.


6. Aries gets a scratch; they let him tag along a while before he turns zombie and they kill him.


7. He and Gabrielle discuss Valhalla.  Great, very old vampires.  The extended flashback to the meeting of Aries and Gabrielle was amateurish, bloated, stupid.  Also, the yellow filter did not make it more interesting, just more repellant.


8. Soon after Gabrielle detonates Aries, the team shoots her until she dies.  Who knows when she got infected.  Lance finally gets it that the commandos are vampires who are not also zombies.  The zombie problem came from vampires switching to cows blood; unfortunately, someone ate a cow with mad cow disease.  The flashback to Viper becoming a vampire was also not interesting. The flashback for Doc was just as stupid as well as repulsive.  They used the ugly yellow filters again.


9. It was good to see the Doc character die horribly, but not heroically.  Vanity films usually suck rocks, and Eddie Conna's effort here is no exception.


10. The ending does not help with any of the film's shortcomings, but it does hint at a sequel.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Wretched as a vanity flick, repellant as horror hybrid, bad SFX.
2. One star of five.  Two blackholes for acting and screenplay.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Fairly good for film mostly shot at night.  The weakest point would be the SFX.


2. Sound: 2/10 Beyond boring and repetitive.


3. Acting: 0/10 Next time, hire some actors.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Bad dialog.  Ridiculous exposition of motivation.  Zero characters to care about.  Excessive flashbacks to cover the lack of top level plot. Useless cameo by Forrest J. Ackerman.