Apocalypse of the Dead (2009)


REVIEWER RATING: 
4/10


Also known as Zone of the Dead, this marks Serbia's first attempt at a zombie flick and is pretty much what one would expect from an unimaginative low-budget genre effort. At least they got it right by adding genre vet Ken Foree to the cast, but his badassery wasn't enough to save the film from its inevitable low-rating.

The film starts off at a train station where a "military exercise" has caused all cell phones and GPS devices to become unusable, and forces any commercial trains to skip any stops. A train carrying some experimental biological chemical makes a quick stop at the station (guarded by one person by the way) where a few dumbass military guys  bully a security guard and mistakenly fire off his gun, shooting the deadly cargo and releasing a mysterious green gas into the air. As with all mysterious biological substances, the staff and military men all become zombies..

Meanwhile, a group of federal agents and mercenary Mortimer Reyes (Ken Foree), accompanied by his long-time friend and fellow merc, are on a mission to escort a man from the local jail to another town. A normally routine mission becomes a fight for survival, when the group find themselves having to walk to the nearest police station after they lose their rides and half the squad to the local zombies.

The movie is your standard low-budget zombie flick -- offering the usual plot-holes, underdeveloped characters, and horrible acting. On the plus side, some of the zombie makeup was decent and the acting from the more veteran actors wasn't entirely bad. Sadly there wasn't much gore in the film, which definitely would've made it more entertaining, as it does drag on around the middle when they're holed up in the police station.

It seemed like the filmmakers weren't really sure what they were going for with the zombies, because there are some that run or lunge after people, while others are the old Romero-types that walk slow-as-hell and can be easily avoided. The zombies would also often let out strange growls or roars that would sometimes sound like a cross between a tiger and an elephant; WTF?

The film follows a couple small groups aside from the agents -- we have a professor who somehow survives the train station attack and meets up with a few party-goers and another baffling character simply named "Armageddon" (*rolls eyes*), who aside from kicking zombie ass with his arsenal of weapons, utters nothing but cheesy misquoted scripture each time he opens his mouth; oh and he's one of the writers, which makes perfect sense now that I think about it..

Naturally we know very little about any of these characters and with little back-story on'em we're left to wonder who the hell they are and why they're so good at killin' zombies. Especially the "Armageddon" character, whom supposedly knew this day would come and remained in a monastery waiting for it with his stash of automatic weapons *shrugs*. The prisoner is another underdeveloped character that you'd expect to get some kind of history on, but when the opportunity came up all could be said about him was "it's classified" or what I'd like to refer to as "lazy writing".

Of course you can't have Ken Foree in the movie without the unavoidable Dawn of the Dead reference, which we get towards the end of the film. Ken even spouts some horrible altered "When there's no more room in Hell.." quote in the movie before he goes off to kill a bunch of zombies. I believe it went something like "Hell is going to overflow.. and the dead.. will rise.. forever.." POS!!

Your standard cheesy low-budget zombie pic that offers several plot-holes and underdeveloped characters. There's also a surprisingly lacking amount of gore for a zombie movie. On a more positive note, it kept my interest for the most part and the unintentionally funny scenes and dubbing gave me a nice laugh or two. I'd advise skipping this one.
OVERALL: 
Your standard cheesy low-budget zombie pic that offers several plot-holes and underdeveloped characters. There's also a surprisingly lacking amount of gore for a zombie movie. On a more positive note, it kept my interest for the most part and the unintentionally funny scenes and dubbing gave me a nice laugh or two. I'd advise skipping this one.


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