'[REC] 3: Genesis' Review

In "[REC] 3: Genesis," Koldo and Clara are getting married. The celebration of their big day is ruined when the demonic zombie plague begins to spread like wildfire and infects all of their guests and turns them into the ravenous undead.

Now, I am a huge fan of  the [REC] series. I loved the pacing of "[REC]" and "[REC] 2" and the way that the first person point of view of the found footage films created a sense of immediate urgency and danger that it just breathtakingly terrifying. The zombies of [REC] are fast and strong, and the evil that controls them is unstoppable.

The beginning of both films created an atmosphere that provided a great deal of terror and suspense. Heck, even with all of the action and high octane chase scenes, the two movies managed to be subtle about how the zombies were created, and the forces behind the outbreak.

Unfortunately, the third movie of the franchise utterly fails to deliver in just about everything that it attempts to do. "[REC] 3: Genesis" is an utter disappointment for [REC] fans everywhere.

The absence of Jaume Balagueró working on the film as a co-director with Paco Plaza ( as he did in the first two movies) really shows. The overall tone, directorial style and plotline of "[REC] 3: Genesis" is so far removed from the first two installations that I don't even consider it to be a part of the same franchise.

Instead of being subtle and creating suspenseful scenes of dread by slowly building the tension, Plaza panders to the American gore hound audience and uses cheesy gallows humor and over-the-top ultra-violent zombie kills to create a tongue-in cheek, goofy, splatterpunk monstrosity.

For instance:
The weapons of [REC] consist of a fire axe (because the firemen carry one) and police issue pistols to fight off the zombies. These are realistic weapons.

Here's the weapons used in [REC] 3.

Any movie that uses a chainsaw as a weapon is splatterpunk.

Yep. A stick blender (aka food blitzer) and a chainsaw. That's the best that they could do.

"[REC] 3" is so bad, it couldn't even get the zombies right. 

Gone are the horrified hell-cat like growls and natural sounding screams of the zombies; they were replaced with stock monster sounds that have been around for over 50 years. Gone are the blood filled eyes and the incredibly fast, unstoppable killing machines; they were replaced with shuffling, dumb witted zombies with milky white eyes that pause conveniently for their victim while she fumbles to start a chainsaw and use it for a weapon. Gone is the mystery, the suspense, the over all terror that the first two movies provided, that was replaced with zombies that are utterly are ridiculous and not a serious threat in the slightest. 

Ridiculous and unnecessary changes to the zombies in "[REC] 3" include:

• Once bitten, black veins grow out from the wound and spread across the body as the flesh around the bite turns black. 
• The transformation from dead to demonic zombie is instantaneous a la "28 Days Later." The wounded don't suffer or become deathly ill with fever before turning into a zombie. 
• The reflections of the undead are now that of the thin, long limbed half-naked girl from the attic that started the spread of the infection. Yeah. Real subtle there guys.

In the video below, Koldo (Clara's husband) encounters the corpse of Atun, the man he hired to make a professional video of his wedding. (Atun was set up to be one of the main characters whose first person perspective would be used to tell the story of the movie, but this is abandoned the minute Koldo barricades the kitchen staff door and Atun's camera is broken.) Koldo then comes face-to-face with his uncle Victor, who was bitten by a dog and became infected with the demonic zombie plague. Victor is the one who spreads the disease/demon possession to the wedding guests. Unlike the old woman in "[REC]," he isn't fast, doesn't scream like a vicious hell-cat and has a ridiculous smile on his face, like he's a shuffling drunken idiot who fell on his face and his teeth lips bad enough to cause blood to ooze out of his mouth.

Apparently things have changed, because now you can just hide from the demonic zombies in a church, toss holy water on them (this was mentioned by a character but is never used in the movie), or just recite the Bible to get them to leave you alone.

And the virtually unstoppable evil demon that controlled the zombies in the first two movies? Well, now the corpses it possesses and reanimates as voracious zombies are hindered by a mere humble priest reciting the book of Genesis from the bible. (Which, in retrospect, is probably why the full title is "[REC] 3: Genesis." It didn't get it's title due to the fact the world of the demons is beginning,  it had "Genesis" tacked onto the title because that particular book of the Bible is used moronically as a weak plot device.)

Seriously. Uttering the phrase "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," is enough to get the zombies to stop and stand dumbly while jerking spasmodically-- a convenient director's fiat to allow characters to get out of deadly situations that they shouldn't have survived.


Forget about the Catholic Rite of Exorcism prayer; I'm sure that any old Bible passage will do just fine. Just flip the Good Book open to a random page and start reading.

Talk about idiotic. Even worse, the priest is a one-shot side character who provides an info dump that tells the audience the main reason behind the zombie outbreak. I guess the director decided that we're all too dumb to figure out that little mystery on our own.

Aside from useless characters like the priest, the music royalties agent, and "Sponge John" (not Sponge Bob. Yeah, that copyright joke gets old real quick.) the most aggravating thing about "[REC] 3" is the switch from first person found footage to third person cinematic view after the first half hour of the movie; it is jarring and utterly destroys the tension and terror that was created when zombie outbreak began at the wedding.

This change of perspective also eliminates the two main characters who were recording the wedding with video cameras (Atun and Koldo's cousin Adrian). It  not only switches the point of view of the camera footage in the middle of a scene, but the character point of view as well, which is a big no-no in any form of story telling. (It's not to be done because it's confusing.) The end result of the shift in camera perspective is a loss of the sense of immediate danger and ultimately, the loss of the movie's two main characters as the cameramen wind up dying off-screen.

Atun and Adrian were the two most interesting and well rounded characters of the movie. The professional cameraman and the amateur hand-held camera kid bonded early on and were working together to record the wedding. And then, these two charismatic individuals have their camera's taken away from them, and go from main characters to side notes that don't even get their own death scenes. How sad is that?

Overall, most of the characters of "[REC] 3" aren't very interesting. We go from quick witted fire men, police men and a news reporter to a bride and groom who have the reaction time of a Slowpoke.

Yep. They just stand around even though they are in mortal danger, staring blankly at the zombies. After a while I found this particular pacing issue to be exasperatingly stupid, especially when it came to Clara's actions.

Huh? Zombies are chasing us? I think I'll just stand here for about two minutes in the pouring rain to catch my breath before moving on.

The zombies climbing up the ladder after me and are swarming the tunnels below the building? Nope, I'm not going to run, especially not once I get up through the drain hole in the kitchen floor and find my husband. I think we'll just stand here and embrace and kiss each other for a while before moving on. Because clearly, only that one zombie could climb up the ladder and try to grab my leg, the others are too slow and weak to manage to follow me up. (At this point I began yelling at the TV screen telling the idiots to move before they get killed. I mean, come on! Why the hell they were just standing there like morons playing kissy face during a zombie outbreak? That's just stupid!)

Heck,  even the police that cordon off the wedding area just stood there like deer in headlights when they see a zombie. In the first two movies, the moment anyone got near a window, they were shot at, and in some instances, killed. Here, you can not only walk up to the plastic quarantine wall, you can exit it and walk out the tunnel. You can even stand on the other side of the cordon, in front of the police in their tactical gear and hold an infected zombie for a while before they decide to shoot you. Arg!

There are so many things wrong with this movie that I could go on, but when you get right down to it, it's the pacing, point of view shift and the treatment of the zombies that ruined what could have been an interesting addition to the [REC] series.

Overall, "[REC] 3" is a trite, cliched filled train wreck of a horror movie that couldn't manage to capture the same tone of the first two movies even if it tried. It's the "special" younger brother of "Evil Dead 2" who likes to lick windows and can't go anywhere without wearing a helmet because he keeps slamming his head into the wall. Watching it was worse than watching "Quarantine." In fact, "Quarantine" is down right entertaining when compared to "[REC] 3," which is sad because the characters in the American version of "[REC]" are unsympathetic morons.

"[REC] 3: Genesis" isn't worth renting or seeing in the theater, so save your $10 and don't bother watching it. The only thing scary about this horror movie is that it's terrible.

Top 13 Alien Movies

There are alien movies that are strictly in the fuzzy, feel good Sci-Fi Star-Trekkie sickeningly sweet category and then there are alien movies that scare the living crap out of you because the aliens are ALIEN-- their actions motivations that drive them to kill, maim, consume, abduct and experiment upon our fragile flesh are inconceivable and incomprehensible to our logical, pattern seeking human minds.

For horror buffs that are xenophiles, it's the scary alien movies that matter.

So, here's my list of the top 13 scariest alien movies of all time.


13. Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (1998)

"Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County" aka "Alien Abduction: The McPherson Tape" is a made for TV movie based off the short film "The McPherson Tape" that appeared on the internet in the late 1990's. The movie aired on the now defunct TV channel UPN (United Paramount Network) in 1998. This controversial little film is thought by many to be real footage of an alien abduction.

When this first aired on TV it was called a mockumentary, a type of movie genre that is now called a found footage film. While it is a low budget movie, "Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County" more makes up for it with some very tense scenes that still make me cringe in fear and hold onto my cat like a little girl whenever I see it.

12. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Dr. Miles Bennell's patients are becoming paranoid, and more people are coming to his office, telling him that they believe that their family members or friends are impostors. Is this sweeping mass hysteria, or is something far more sinister actually replacing the townsfolk with duplicates?

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" has been remade several times over the years, but the original is by far the best, with it's ability to create mind numbing paranoia in the viewer. In some ways, it's claustrophobic tone makes it the forefather to the classic alien invasion film "The Thing." This is the movie that invented the term Pod People- you know, the doppelganger copies of people that have all of their memories but just don't act quite right. Those Pod People.

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a classic alien invasion movie and definitely a must see.


11. Signs (2002)

"Signs" is the only M. Night Shyamalan movie that I like. And it has a great soundtrack to boot.

"Signs" is several movies wrapped up into one-- it's a parable about a priest who lost his faith when his wife dies and manages to regain it, and it's about what happens to a small town in the middle of farm country when aliens invade.

Between the quirky (and at times hilariously funny) characters and the pulse pounding, nail biting climax where the aliens enter the Hess' homestead, this movie covers everything from aliens making mysterious crop circles as a form of communication, to UFO sightings and contact with mysterious alien invaders.

The filming style is breathtaking and clever with the alien's never quite fully coming into view until the very end. Which I just absolutely love, because it heightens the suspense and doesn't ruin the movie with terrible over-done CG.

10. Aliens (1986)

James Cameron's 1986 masterpiece "Aliens" is one of my favorite horror movies of all times.

What makes "Aliens" so great is that it takes the spooky atmosphere of a desolate planet wracked with storms and the panic inducing claustrophobic setting of the terraformer's colony to create one heck of a scary ride. Even better, "Aliens" started the whole concept of space marines in pop-culture, which has been the darling of Sci-Fi video games for many years now.

"Aliens" has a strong female lead character, Ellen Ripley, who manages to find her own place among ;a rag-tag crew of misfit marines and survive yet another encounter with the xenomorphs. This time, Ripley takes on the big momma of the aliens herself, the Queen.


9. Prince of Darkness (1987)

John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness" is a gem of a Lovecraftian Horror film that covers everything from the nature of evil to the existence of alternate dimensions, atomic theory and theoretical physics.

After the last of an ancient secret order of Catholic priests dies, Father Loomis discovers that they had kept an ancient alien artifact locked up in the basement of an old abandoned church. Concerned with what he has found, he contacts Professor Birack and convinces him to bring some of his graduate students over to the church to investigate it. While staying at the church the students start sharing the same dream; a vision of the future and a dire warning of things to come.

During their investigations, the mysterious neon green protoplasmic substance that is swirling ominously in the artifact begins infecting and possessing them. It is soon revealed that the cylinder contains a dark slumbering alien god that has awoken and is going to bring about the end of the world.

While they may call the evil entity "Satan" or the "Anti-God," the themes present in this film are taken directly from pages of H.P. Lovecraft's stories. There are prophetic dreams of a looming disaster, mirrors used as portals to other dimensions and ancient alien artifacts that drive people mad and turns them into monstrous zombies that collapse into insects. The imagery in "Prince of Darkness" is so surreal and alien, if you haven't given John Carpenter's most under-rated horror movie a try, you certainly should.

8. Super 8 (2011) 

"Super 8" is one of those kid's growing up over summer vacation movies that is sort of in the same vein of "Stand By Me" and "ET," except a lot darker. It's an alien invasion film full of action and suspense, and at the same time a movie about kids that are learning about life and each other. It's also the first movie in quite a while that I've seen that has actually had kids cast to play kids, as opposed to 20 year olds posing at high school students.

It's the summer of 1979 and a group of kids have gotten together to make their own zombie movie, called "The Case" on Super 8 film. While filming on location at a train station, they witness a train crash caused by their science teacher. Scattered all over the ground are weird white cubes, which later are revealed to be sections of an alien spacecraft. Unfortunately, the cubes weren't the only thing that escaped the train during the crash, and now a giant alien is out to recapture the parts of its spaceship in a desperate effort to return home.

The alien in "Super 8" is both menacing and sympathetic at the same time. All it wants to do is go home, but the evil government refuses to let it leave.

This movie not only smartly deals with the movie being filmed within a movie motif, it also has characters that  are well fleshed out and very believable. 

7. Fire in the Sky (1993)

"Fire in the Sky" is based on a novel of the same name by Travis Walton.  

Travis and his logger buddies are working in the forest, cutting trees to clear the area for development. One night while driving home from a long day of work, a strange fiery glow appears in the sky. Travis, compelled by the sight of it, steps out of the truck and is hit by a beam of bright white light. His friends, terrified, drive off, leaving him for dead. 

They report the incident to the local authorities but no one believes them and they are suspected of murdering Travis and dumping his body in the woods.

Five days later, Travis appears at a gas station-- he is naked, deyhydrated and out of his mind with fear. 

The flashbacks to Travis' alien abduction are pretty intense, and there is an awful eye-scare in one of the scenes that to this day makes me cringe. 

6. Alien (1979)

The Nostromo, a commercial towing spaceship, is heading home to Earth with a nice haul of ore. The ship picks up an emergency transmission from a nearby planet, which causes the computer to wake up the crew and bring them out of stasis. 

They land on the desolate planet and several crew members head out to investigate the signal. Before long they find themselves walking up to a long abandoned alien space ship with a chamber full of eggs. As they walk through the chamber, one of the eggs hatches and a face-hugger leaps out and attaches itself to crewman Kane, who passes out. Attempts to remove the face-hugger from Kane reveal that the creature has corrosive acid for blood. Yikes.

Soon, it's revealed that the face-hugger implanted an alien larvae into his chest- well, the alien actually reveals itself when it bursts through Kane's chest and kills him. The alien runs off, and the Nostromo crew is stuck fighting an alien creature without any real weaponry. 

"Alien" is a brilliantly filmed Sci-Fi horror film that uses light and shadow to great effect to build up suspense and dread in the viewer while the xenomorph picks off the crew one by one. 

5. Undead (2003)

"Undead" takes place in the Australian fishing village of Berkley. The sleepy village suffers a barrage of meteors that turn people into the hungry undead. A group of survivors is left to fend for themselves as the ravenous zombies attack them at every turn.

While "Undead" is a zombie movie at heart (and a pretty scary, yet hilarious, movie at that) it is, ultimately, an alien invasion movie. Yep. The aliens made the zombies. Way to go E.T. 

This movie apparently recieved terrible reviews, but I think that it is a wonderfully campy gore fest that has both zombies and aliens in the same film. The characters are stereotypes, but the kick-ass fisherman steals the show, providing both John Wayne-like swagger and highly inventive weapons to two genres that are over-run with trite weapon cliches.

4. The Blob (1988)

Ah yes, "The Blob." Never before has strawberry jello been so terrifying.

This alien creature feature starts out with a meteor crashing near a small town in California. An old old hobo comes across the crash site and finds a strange smoking rocky sphere. The sphere cracks open and a thick pink slime engulfs his hand. Terrified, he runs for help and encounters three college students, who take him to the local hospital. Unfortunately, it's too late for the man and the pink slime grows over him and dissolves his body as it consumes him.

The giant amboa from hell then goes on a killing spree/eating binge as it begins to devour the entire town's enhabitants, growing larger with each person it consumes.

Walking Dead fans will find it interesting to learn that Frank Darabont co-wrote the screenplay for "The Blob" and that Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale) plays Sheriff Herb Geller in the movie. How about that? (Of course, now I have watch "The Blob" again so that I can spot DeMunn in action.)

3. Communion (1989)

"Communion" is based on a book of the same name by Whitley Strieber. 

Whitley Strieber is played by Chrisopher Walken, whose family experiences run ins with aliens during their vacation in the woods. Whitley is abducted from the cabin by aliens and his life changes forever. Tramatized by the events, he goes to a psychiatrist and undergoes hypnotic regression where he has flash-backs of his abduction that are absolutely horrific. 

"Communion" is one of the most trippy, and at the same time terrifying, alien movies I have ever seen. 

2. Altered (2006)

"Altered" was directed by Eduardo Sanchez, the co-director of "The Blair Witch Project."

15 years ago, five teenage boys went on a hunting trip that they would never forget. While in the woods, the boys were abducted by aliens and became the subjects of cruel experiments that killed one of the boys.

Wyatt distanced himself from his friends and now lives in constant fear and paranoia away from civilization. Unfortunately for him, two of his friends have taken it upon themselves to hunt down the aliens that tortured them, and they've just caught one.

"Altered" is a suspenseful, scary horror movie that does well with a small budget. This movie is definately a sleeper hit that will one day be a cult classic.


1. The Thing (1982)

John Carpenter's "The Thing" is a remake of "The Thing From Another World" that was based on the novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. And is a more faithful interpretation of the pulp fiction alien story than "The Thing From Another World."

"The Thing" is a movie that is just oozing paranoia and dread. Between the desolate Antarctic landscape, the eery minimalistic soundtrack, and the utterly alien Thing that transforms into creatures that Should Not Be, this movie is one of the best alien movies ever made.

Although it was filmed in 1982, "The Thing" has aged quite well, and the recent Blu-Ray release has brought new features on the Thing back to life. There are details on the monsters that were lost in the low resolution VHS and DVD versions of the movie (such as all of the eyes that open up on the Thing after it assimilates the dogs and becomes that towering monstrosity in the kennel. I didn't even know they were there until I saw it on Blu-Ray), and the new HD digitally remastered version of the movie on Blu-Ray reveals the monster in all it's unearthly glory. If you get a chance to watch "The Thing" on Blu-Ray, you really should.

The Worst Zombie Movies Ever Made

There are plenty of lists out there about zombie movies. This one is about the worst zombie movies ever made. And while there were a lot of contenders, these four are the worst of the lot: "Survival of the Dead", "Zombie Apocalypse," "Steve Niles' Remains" and "Deadlands: The Rising."



Survival of the Dead (2009)

Synopsis from Magnet Releasing:

The newest film from horror master George A. Romero (legendary creator of the Night of the Living Dead franchise) picks up where Diary of the Dead leaves off. On a small island off the coast of Delaware, live two families locked in a struggle for power and control over the fate of the undead. The O’Flynns approach the zombie plague with a shoot-to-kill attitude. The Muldoons feel that the zombies should be quarantined and kept “alive,” in hopes that a solution will be discovered. For both families, existence on Plum Island is a nightmarish world where humans are the minority and zombies rule.

"Survival of the Dead" is the worst zombie movie Romero has ever done. Period.  Anyone who says otherwise is suffering from Romero Fan-Boy Wank Syndrome: No matter what it is, if Romero makes it and there's zombies in it, the movie is absolute gold!

Ha! "Survival of the Dead" is drowning in trite cliches and not a single character in the movie has any sort of redeeming quality about them. Not only are all of the characters unsympathetic jerks, they are stuck in a bad retelling of the Hatfields and the McCoys on Little Ireland er, I mean, Plum Island in North America off the coast of Delaware. Delaware? Seriously?

One faction of Little Ireland, the O'Flynn clan, wants to dispose of the zombies and put them out of their undead misery. (I'm on the O'Flynn's side on the matter, but that's just me.) The other faction, the Muldoon clan, wants to "train" them and use them for menial labor. Muldoon even has tethered a "mailman" zombie to a mailbox. It walks away, is yanked back on the tether and then returns to the mailbox to "deliver" a letter. The idiots firmly believe that zombies are safe to be around and that they can be taught, which results in having a "herd" of zombies stored in a corral on the Muldoon clan farm. This idea that zombies can be useful began in the Romero zombie franchise with "Day of the Dead."

In "Day of the Dead" Romero posited the idea: What if rotting zombie brains could retain some intelligence, however animalistic it is? What would happen if they could remember things or events from when they were alive?

It's an interesting idea, one that was handled quite well by Kim Paffenroth's novel "Dying to Live." Unfortunately, neither "Land of the Dead" nor "Survival of the Dead" managed to pull it off with any sort of dignity.

"Survival of the Dead" takes the idea presented with Beethoven loving Bub the zombie in "Day of the Dead" and Big Daddy aka zombie Moses in "Land of the Dead" and runs with it in circles while holding a razor sharp pair of scissors to give us horse riding zombie Jane.

Horse riding "smart zombie" Jane O'Flynn in "Survival of the Dead" is the undead twin sister of Janet O'Flynn. Smart zombie Jane rides a horse all over the place on Little Ireland. Yeah. You read that right. The zombie is riding a living, breathing animal and the horse for some strange reason, has absolutely no problem with being ridden by a dead thing that is still moving.

Oh sure, you can train a horse to do a lot of things, but get it to allow a rotting animated corpse on its back? You have to be freaking kidding me. Horses are not that dumb. It is highly unlikely that a horse would let anything that smells like a rotting cess pool and looks like it just crawled up out of its grave anywhere near it.


Which brings us to one of my main problems with "Survival of the Dead." The zombies are not treated like a threat. They are taunted and played with like it's happy fun time in the zombie apocalypse. When they are not being played with, the zombies are somehow able to teleport behind people, or like ninja undead, slip between a whole squad of soldiers (as in the beginning of the movie) and attack a poor man while his dumbfounded buddies just stand there and watch. They don't take even kill it until after their buddy is dead.

One remarkable idiotic zombie death takes place on a fishing boat. One of the soldiers picks up a fire extinguisher, gets the zombie's attention with it and then gets it to bite it, kind of like you would when teasing a dog (well if you are that kind of a jerk...). The zombie then has its eyes and brain blown out of its head when the fire extinguisher goes off. (Which apparently was also done by a soldier in "Day of the Dead.")

By the time I got to the end of the movie, I was wishing that someone would blow out my eyes out too, just to put me out of my misery. Don't bother with this one. It's terrible.


SyFy's Zombie Apocalypse (2011)

Synopsis from IMDB:
Months after a zombie plague has wiped out 90 percent of the American population, a small group of survivors fight their way cross-country to a rumored refuge on the island of Catalina.


Please, please SyFy, just stop. Stop making movies that rely on CG-- it's obvious you can't afford a computer effects studio that can actually make the animation look believable. And while you're at it, just stop producing movies all together. 


"Zombie Apocalypse" is another bad SYFY movie with terrible two dimensional weightless computer graphics, this time with "magic katana" karate-chop action! Awesome chick with katana Cassie is so amazing that her katana blade doesn't even get remotely close to a zombie when swings it, and yet, WOOSH! Off with their heads! It's kind of like watching one of those Samurai magic sword attacks in anime where they just swing it and the force of the blade flinging through the air is so strong that it knocks down buildings. Except this movie was supposed to be about normal average every day people trying to survive... Sigh.

Just when you think the CG can't get any worse, they encounter a weightless zombie tiger on the pier.
I guess it wanted to go fishing...?  

SyFy's "Zombie Apocalypse" has such unbelievable character actions that even the intro is dumb.

Who decided it would be a good idea to set off global wide EMPs to cut off all communication in an attempt to quarantine the zombie virus? I mean, it's not a high-tech zombie virus caused by nanites infecting the tissue of dead human beings and reanimating them. So how exactly would cutting off communications stop it from spreading? Blowing up bridges, cutting off fuel supplies, military enforcement of quarantine zones, that would help, for a while at least. But, ruining electronic devices? Come on!

Taryn Manning who plays Ramona, the main character and stereotypical dumb blonde, sounds like she has one hell of a head cold throughout the whole movie. The best I can compare it to is the voice of Lindsay Lohan in the Robot Chicken episode "Highlohander." Not only does she sound just like her, Ramona is just as stupid as the Lohan parody as well.

Yes. That is an actual line from the movie. And it's as intelligent and articulate as the movie's heroine gets, or anyone else in "Zombie Apocalypse" for that matter.

These characters are so dumb, they'd have to stop and ask the zombies for directions to Catalina.

The heavy reliance on sub-par computer graphics for animated special effects and the terrible dialog in "Zombie Apocalypse" would only work if we were living in the Bizarro universe of "Idiocracy." Then it might, and that's a big MIGHT, be funny. But scary? Hell no. The only thing scary about this movie is that someone paid money to get it produced. Don't even bother renting it, or watching it if it ever appears on TV again. You'll lose SAN points if you do.

Steve Niles' Remains (2011)

IMDB Synopsis:
The story centers on two lone survivors of a bizarre accident that reduced most of the world's population to zombies. They take refuge in a vacant casino and fight a losing battle against the undead.

"Steve Niles' Remains" by Chiller is another zombie movie that gets a ton of really, really good gushing praise from reviewers and for the life of me, I can't figure out why, other than the fact that "It's got zombies in it. Hur Durr..."

The zombies in "Remains" are so dumb, they eat their own arms.

It's a damn shame that the acting and overall attention to detail in the short film that leads up to the start of the movie in "Remains: Road to Reno" wasn't held up as an example of production value for the actual freaking movie. Talk about a disappointment. I couldn't even get through the first half hour of the damn thing. It was absolute eye-rolling stupidity.

None of the characters acted like a real person would and the entire thing suffers from Idiot Plot Syndrome. As in, if real thinking people were in the same situations, they would never do any of the things that the characters in this movie did.

What's worse is that the character creator and writer of the comic that the movie was based on, Steve Niles, admits in an interview with Yahoo! Movies that his characters are in fact, idiotic douche bags. "[Tom] is kind of a dumb ass. He's not the brightest guy in the world. Tori isn't the nicest person in the world."

So, his two main characters are an idiot and a mean, shallow chick that works in a casino? Great. At least the zombies didn't talk in the movie, like they do in the comic book and say things like "Need flesh!" But that's the only thing "Remains" does right.

Hey guys, I know there's zombies loose in the hotel, but I'm going to split up and go off on my own anyways...  


Deadlands: The Rising (2006)

Synopsis from IMDB:
October 2008. A biochemical weapon explosion causes a freak chain of events and brings the dead back to life. It is up to five people to make a stand for survival against an ever growing army of the Living Dead.

Remember, "Deadlands: The Rising" has nothing to do with the Pinnacle tabletop RPG "Deadlands." I know because the intro to the movie tells us and it was on the box when I rented it from the video store.

At first when I was looking for info on the Internet about this movie, I didn't believe that it was the same thing. The synopsis has absolutely NOTHING in common with the actual movie that was put out.

So, what's "Deadlands: The Rising" about? Nothing. Seriously. It's about nothing. There is no plot. More than half of the movie is either A. Michelle writing in her "journal" about events that already happened with her narrating as she writes (Yeah. That got old real quick) or B. Gary and/or Brian whining and doing nothing at all.

Most of  "Deadlands: The Rising" is just filler. It lingers on events that are of absolute no consequence and are boring as hell. There is a scene that takes over a half an hour where Gary and Brian shoot at cans. I'm not kidding. Shooting at cans and improvising boring dialog. For over 30 minutes of the film.

Oh, and there's a scene with a dog in a closet. And one scene where Gary or Brian (because seriously, after a while I stopped caring about who was whom) is stuck in a "traffic jam" at night and zombies come out of the darkness and attack people in cars. Gee. If only they managed to just lock their damned car doors. Then none of that would've happened.

Yeah. "Deadlands: The Rising" makes "Zombie Apocalypse" seem like a decent movie. And that's sad, because it sucks.

World War Z Movie Teaser Trailer and Preview Pictures

The popular book "World War Z" by Max Brooks consists of a series of interviews with survivors of a zombie outbreak. The  movie rights to the novel were purchased in 2007 by Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B Entertainment.

The Best Zombie Movie Opening Ever

Like the different takes of slow and fast zombies that are now prevalent in the genre, some zombie movies start slow and some start fast. Then there are fast zombie movies that have such incredibly intense openings that they stay with you for years. Such is the case of Dawn of the Dead (2004), which has the best zombie movie opening ever.

The screenplay was brilliantly written adaptation of George A. Romero's original "Dawn of the Dead" script and was penned by James Gunn. It was so good in fact, that it was nominated for the 2005 Bram Stoker Award for Screenplays.

"Dawn of the Dead" starts out innocently enough, all the while cleverly leaving little hints that begin to add up and point to zombie apocalypse that I just love.

Claymation Horror! Chainsaw Maid

Japanese claymation short horror film, "Chainsaw Maid" by Takena Nagao (aka TNT) is about a loyal maid that fights off a horde of zombies with a chainsaw. Takena made it as a tribute to 1980s splatter punk horror films. Personally, I love this little gem of claymation horror. It doesn't get any more full of blood, guts and gore than this!

[REC] Review

[REC] is a Spanish "found footage" film written and directed by Jaume Balaguero. It is the first installment of the [REC] series.

The movie follows Angela Vidal, a local news reporter and her cameraman Pablo, who are on-site at a firehouse in Barcelona doing a show for her documentary series "While You're Asleep."

The entire movie is filmed from the point of view of her cameraman Pablo. It feels like he truly is a professional cameraman. There are moments of shaky cam hell, but for the most part, he holds the camera steady. (And for that I am thankful. I don't know about you, but other first person point-of-view found footage films make me motion sick.)

During her tour of the firehouse there is an emergency call, and they join the firefighters in their truck as they head over to an apartment complex. The firemen were called in to help an elderly woman who is trapped in her apartment.  As soon as they break down the door and enter her apartment, you see that something isn't quite right. The old woman charges at them, attacks and bites a policeman.