20131013: Horror Review--Rise of the Zombies

Rise of the Zombies

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2012, NR, 89 minutes, horror, action, thriller, aspect 1.78
2. IMDB: 3.6/10.0 from 1,358 users; Asylum Films budget estimated at under 500,000 USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 16% liked it from 142 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.9/5.0 stars from 146,637 users.
5. Directed by: Nick Lyon.  Screenplay by: Keith Allan and Delondra Williams.
6. Starring: Marial Hemingway as Dr. Lynn Snyder, Ethan Suplee as Marshall, LeVar Burton as Dr. Dan Halpern, Danny Trejo as Captain Caspian, Heather Hemmons as Ashley, French Stewart as Dr. Barney Arnold, Chad Lindberg as Kyle, Madonna Magee (11/11/11) as Vivian.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The zombie apocalypse has already occurred at the beginning of the film. 


2. The zombie phenomenon is treated as if it were a disease.  One of the major plot threads is the search for a vaccine.


3. Supposedly one has been found by Barney Arnold.  There's a refuge on Alcatraz, where Lynn and cohorts reside.  Lynn makes contact with Barney, and hopes to get the vaccine.  Alcatraz gets a major zombie invasion.


4. Lynn leads a small group to get the vaccine.  Caspian leads a second group looking for a new refuge in Petaluma.  Dan stays on Alcatraz to learn more about the disease and hopefully heal his infected daughter.


5. While stopping at an upscale house to get food and rest, Caspian's group gets taken out (except for Kyle) by one zombie.  Dan makes some progress.  Lynn's team has better luck staying alive, but are slow to get to the vaccine.  Kyle perseveres.


6. Dan makes some progress on his research, but his daughter infects him so he takes them both out with a grenade at zero paces.  Lynn's group barely escapes another zombie attack; they reunite with Kyle.


7. How could this turn out well?  We've got four survivors in Lynn's group.  The amount of (unproven) vaccine that Barney has is probably very small, and hence unlikely to turn the tide, even if there were enough people to disperse it.


8. Ashley decides to commit suicide out of desperation.  We celebrate with another bad couple of SFX.  Down to three now.  They are attacked again at a police station where they were stocking up on weapons.


9. At last!  The three survivors meet Barney.  Is it too late?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Despite 4 real actors, still a bad zombie film.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 7/10 Variable.  The daylight work is crisp and good.  The night scenes tend to be useless on visual to the point where sound is the only guide.


2. Sound: 7/10 Just OK.


3. Acting: 4/10 My history with Marial Hemingway, LeVar Burton, Danny Trejo, and French Stewart is through much better properties.  Given the screenplay, I still like them.  The rest of the cast might as well have been cardboard cutouts with speakers. On the other hand, the onscreen presence of Ethan Suplee is worse than the zombies.


4. Screenplay: 0/10  Logic problems aplenty.  The vaccine pursued through the whole film is unproven, and how much is there?  The answer is next to none, with no fabrication equipment.  The whole enterprise is pointless.  The zombies cannot climb much of anything early on, then later they can scale the Golden Gate Bridge?  In several scenes, two or three zombies can break open locked prison doors, but later 20 of them have a hard time with a chain link fence door.  What was the point of Dan's efforts?  All of it seemed to have been lost.  Those are hardly the only problems.  Barney says he needs a proper lab so he can replicate the vaccine.  Where might that be?


5. SFX: 2/10 Cheap, bad-looking.  The splatter shots were especially bad, the micro-organism shots were laughable, the delivery of the baby (by Lynn, who killed the mother) was just ridiculous.  The grenade explosion was really bad.  The electrocution FX near the end were cheesy.