First thing you notice is the fact that we have a SyFy Channel Original Movie, this usually means pretty crappy overall with ass loads of CGI. For those who are uneducated in the ways of SyFy Originals, take any Lifetime Original production and remove the female man hating story and replace it with a Sci Fi (notice the correct way I spelled it, Damn you SyFy!) or horror story, and movie gold has been made. The funny thing is between Lifetime and SyFy originals the acting, effects, audio and overall feel are almost the same. The bottom line here is the fact that most SyFy originals just plain suck and not in the cool "so bad, it's good way".
Zombie Apocalypse is pretty much your run of the mill Z flick. You have a group of random people pulled together as the world goes to undead hell and they must find a way to survive and locate this island called Catalina. Most of these characters are transparent and I did not find myself caring for any of them. When your characters have no real back story and lack any development you cannot expect the viewer to care, much less be able to name the last one that died. If you need good character development in a story like this go watch The Walking Dead on AMC. I knew coming into this that the movie was going to feature way too much CGI and get a little corny (CGI zombie tigers?) but I decided to stick it out because as most know I watch any zombie flick that crosses my desk.
It seems someone tricked Ving Rhymes into doing another less than mediocre zombie film and this time he is billed even further down and has less involvement scene to scene. For those who do not remember he did that great remake of Dawn of the Dead and then followed it up by taking part in that complete mess of a remake Day of the Dead. We also see Taryn Manning who has been in a number of decent tv shows and movies like 8 Mile and Hawaii Five O. As for any other memorable cast members, I could not tell you because either they were pointless or I had already been on my third can of Four Loko at this point and we all know that makes things a little hazy.
Um so.... yeah, lets talk about those special effects. There is a place and time for CGI. Horror movies have gotten way too dependent on it because it is so much easier on the budget and we get that. Make-up is what makes zombies look great and numerous other horror staples like creatures, killers, torture etc. When you use CGI too much, and incorrectly I might add, you really piss of that 25 person core audience you already had. At times I had to wonder if this movie's effects were done by a high school group on a computer. I mean we had mistakes like the CGI bullets firing from guns. I do not believe a single person bothered to actually have knowledge on what a gun does or looks like when firing. Explosions were off timing and what about the zombie tiger. And as for the make-up, well when you have a zombie fighting you really need to make sure you have all that rubber and what not adhered before the shot. I noticed a time or two when you could clearly tell the make up was not right. I will also attribute this to the blind high school kids that helped the other high school SFX group.
So, what have we learned today? I hate CGI and Ving Rhymes needs to pick better movies or at least demand a bigger role. Until SyFy goes back to the correct spelling of the channel name all of their movies will suck? Anyone can write a zombie flick and SyFy will green light it all while supplying the kids needed to do your make=up and effects? It is safe to say that all of the above has come out of this review and stands as complete truth until someone tells me differently.
Pros.
It's about zombies.
Ving Rhymes
Cons.
CGI.
Story blah.
No character development.
SyFy is a horrible way to spell the channel name.
1/5
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