Category Archives: Movie

Movie reviews, suggested movies for musicians to view, etc

Movie, Review, Sci-Fi, Zombies

Breach (2020)

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Yes, I am including Breach (2020, also titled Anti-Life) in my zombie film reviews.  WHY?  Because, by today’s zombie film standards, this fits the model … well, not any worse than Billy Elliot.

Around the year 2242 A.D., Earth is facing an extinction level event.  300,000 survivors are selected to board a spaceship called the Ark (meanwhile 19 billion people are left behind for the big bye-bye).  This ship will take them to a planet to be newly colonized, which will be called New Earth.  Extinction level event, Ark, New Earth — yeah, I know, real inventive.  Shortly into the multi-month trip, a saboteur releases something on board to kill off the crew and 300K passengers in hypersleep.  This wormy slug thing kills people, infects them, and turns the dead in to reanimated (<– SEE, zombie film!) killer monsters.

I’ll stop there because I hate spoilers.

I picked up on Breach from folks talking about it online.  Folks seemed to either love it or hate it.  It’s sci-fi, Bruce Willis and Thomas Jane are the only recognizable stars — ehh — I had to watch it!  So far as I could tell this was a moderately budgeted film (that flopped in the theaters, but it was released just as COVID-19 restrictions were being loosened) that takes you by surprise.  It might not have been spectacular, but I thought it was pretty good.  As zombie films go, understanding that it might be a zombie film … I’d give it a Yellow Puss rating.

This is what a dentist sees following Hallowe’en weekend…

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Anna And The Apocalypse (2017)

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Imagine it . . .  You’re an angsty high school student in a small town, heading toward your imminent graduation and thinking about your future.  You’re hassled by your principal and being hounded by your ex, while your best friend won’t just come out and tell you that they’re in love with you.  What’s worse, it’s the night of the school Christmas pageant when the zombie apocalypse begins.  Maybe this isn’t you, but it is Anna And The Apocalypse (2017) — so break out  the melee weapons!

Anna And The Apocalypse is a huge ball of fun for the right viewer.  It’s a musical with dance numbers, set in high school during Christmas right at the beginning of the zombie apocalypse.  Frankly, I was playing it and barely watching when, about 20 minutes into the film, a zombie was killed in a hilarious and absolutely new and inventive way as far as zombie films go.  The music is also quite good and the song settings is perfect.  Oh, and did I forget to mention that the story is set in Scotland?!?

Anna And The Apocalypse just may be my new favourite Christmas movie.  My rating is Green Ooze, and Anna And The Apocalypse can be found on my list of BagpiperDon’s Favourite Zombie Movies!

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Dead Before Dawn (2012)

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Dead Before Dawn (2012)A CURSE IS UNLEASHED in Dead Before Dawn!

A group of college friends — some of whom play football and wear cheer leader outfits for a high school, because that isn’t confusing — accidentally break an evil urn in an occult gift shop.  As the dust settles they inadvertently create a horrible curse — is there any other kind —  UPON THEMSELVES!

SPHS
SPHS — yeah… usually HS means High School — so how are they college students?!?  Is it possible that these “college” students attend St. Paul’s High School in Winnipeg, Manitoba?

As a result of the malediction, everyone they make eye contact with will kill themselves and then become “Zemons” — a combination of Zombie Demons — and the high school college kids only have 24 hours to reverse the curse!  With the fate of the entire world resting on their shoulders, our heroes race through the night armed with a slew of homemade weapons, avoiding eye contact and hickeys, and filling their shopping list of items needed to reverse their curse.  Will they be able to reverse the curse and save the day, or will all of humanity be Dead Before Dawn?

spawn from Hell seeks loving gentleman
This gave me flashbacks of some of my ex-girfriends … oh yeah, good times.

Dead Before Dawn is not a serious zombie film.

If you come away from DBD thinking, “You know, as serious films of the zombie genre go … that sucked!”  I read reviews that essentially said this, and those people MISSED THE POINT.

Spoof – A humorous imitation of something, typically a film or a particular genre of film, in which its characteristic features are exaggerated for comic effect.

Dead Before Dawn is similar to Z Nation — they’re intentionally trying to be goofy and make fun of comedy zombie films (see “parody“).  For me this was an unexpected film and looked like what films of this sort should be — fun to make.  It made me feel like I was watching Fido for the first time again.

free candy
Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown, Ph.D. – a student of all sciences and the inventor of the first time machine built out of a DeLorean
Christopher Lloyd
If you don’t recognize this guy it’s Christopher Lloyd playing a high school senior in 1958

Give this blood-soaked adventure horror–comedy a watch — it’s an unexpected fun zombie-demon flick from Canada, great for a laid-back kick-back chuckle with friends.

Written by Tim Doiron and directed by April Mullen, it stars a bunch of folks I’m not familiar with and presume are Canadian along with Christopher Lloyd — who I will always think of as Emmett “Doc” Brown.  88 minutes long, this is the first ever live-action, 100% Canadian feature film to be shot in Stereoscopic 3-D.  Filmed in 20 days in and around the Niagara Falls region of Canada in 2011, it features occasional adult humor and it achieves being a fun film without revealing adult body parts frequently found in zombie films.

I rate Dead Before Dawn — drum roll please — Green Ooze!  Maybe moderately green, but definitely green — good job Canucks!

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Movie, Zombies

The Battery (2012)

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Wow — sometimes I really hate this hobby … reviewing zombie films.  Today I’m reviewing “The Battery” from 2012.  According to All Things Horror on the cover of the DVD, this is “The first must-see zombie film in a hell of a long while.”  If that’s the case, then we’ve been far more desperate than I was possibly aware.

So before I lay into The BAD-tery, let’s figure out a few things … more over, fail to.  I can’t find who “All Things Horror” is online because the name is way too general.  And when you cross your search-terms with “Battery” …. well, you get all-things horror and every brand cell in double-A, triple-A, C, D and so on.

What I can find is the usual Wikipedia, IMDb, and Rotten Tomatoes pages.  So here’s the score …  The film had a budget of $6000.  It was shot in 15 days in Connecticut*, and the scenes were not planned in advance.  There are only 6 zombies for the first hour of the film — that’s 1 zombie for every 10 minutes — so little that I’m not sure this can be called a zombie film.  The film stars debut  director Jeremy Gardner and co-producer Adam Cronheim.  Allegedly their characters are two former baseball players trying to survive a zombie apocalypse — but they’re both so far out of shape clearly they were more likely T-ball coaches trying to hook up with single moms.  Oh, and let’s not forget the gratuitous Z-film breasts …
(* For the record, I have nothing against Connecticut … at this time.)

Watch the extras — this actress said she hated doing the scene, dislikes the name her zombie is know by, and pretty much regrets the role …. and now there are pervy pictures and videos of her all over the net. Given the budget of the film … I doubt she even got a hundred bucks!

So let me give you my rating of The Battery, then tell you what is redeeming about it …

Long & Short, “The Battery” is lucky to get a Yellow Puss rating from me — think more of that putrid orange colour between yellow and red.  It’s dull, it lacks zombies, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere for an hour, and I’m not sure if it went any where 41 minutes later because I skipped through that part then shut it off.  Frankly, you’ll find this on my “Zombie Films to Avoid” page.

Adam Cronheim and Jeremy Gardner

The Battery isn’t completely garbage —
here’s what I liked about it …

If you’ve read my other Z-film blog posts you’ll know that one of the things is dislike is the constant use of The Journey story arc.  This film doesn’t show the start or reasoning behind the “We have to get from Point-A to Point-B” — it just shows that the main characters are traveling through the zombie apocalypse (that mostly lacks zombies).  Also, one of the characters is frequently making a bid for the duo to stop traveling — to stop being on pointless Journey arc.  This is characteristic of what’s going on in The Battery — it is showing the human side of the experience, the relationship between the two men, that some people (understandably) seek normalcy.  For me this is the redeeming part of the film, what makes watching the first hour bearable … er, I mean, vaguely worthwhile — not much other zombie media offers this.

Outside of that, I skipped the last 30 or 40 minutes of the film — and I think you’d be just as well off to skip all 101 minutes of this film.  But … High Fives to Jeremy Gardner and Adam Cronheim — they got to live their dreams of making and staring in a zombie film and pretending they were baseball players.  Whoopie-Doo!

Here … if you really have to, you can watch The Battery on Tubi.

Movie, Review, Zombies

The Dead Don’t Die (2019)

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The Dead Don't DieToday I’m reviewing the 2019 zombie film “The Dead Don’t Die“.  If you’ve read my other Z-film reviews you are well aware that I have a rating system.  It works on the Red/Yellow/Green-light colour scheme but with a zombie-film theme….

  • Red Blood — Blood can carry infection, that’s bad, keep away
  • Yellow Puss — Puss is gross, but not the worst thing in the world
  • Green Ooze — There’s a certain kind of freeky-cool thing to ooze if you’re a zombie fan

That said, I’ll get down to the point — I rate The Dead Don’t Die as Red Blood.  Just before watching it I saw someone comment about it online.  They said that you have to appreciate the writer or director’s style of comedy, or it’s in the form of a certain kind of humor — or whatever — but the film is just a stupid, slow-moving, and 103 minutes of non-funny hyper-deadpan pointlessness.

One would think that this film would be magnificent just by looking at the cast list — Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Selena Gomez, Iggy Pop, Carol Kane, and others not worth mentioning — but it’s . . . well, anything but magnificent.

I think Bill Murray’s character says it best during the first half of the film …

“I don’t think you want to see this … this is really awful — maybe the worst thing I’ve ever seen.“
This picture depicts about as exciting and interesting this film gets …

I tried finding what the budget was for this cinematic sleep-aid.  The-Numbers.com gave just about every digit except the budget.  Wikipedia would only report that it made $14.9 million Box office — which at movie ticket prices these days that means there are 750,000 people who wished they hadn’t gone to the theater that night.  According to The Irish Times , director Jim Jarmusch said that costs were kept down on this film because “… corporate overlords have sucked up everything, and for me to even get financing is difficult … (the cast) were paid in oatmeal. They were not paid well.”

Outside of feeling a bit like early zombie films, there’s no point in seeing this Z-film.  It doesn’t go anywhere and it doesn’t show Z-film fans anything new … or for that matter at all interesting.  If there was anything that prompted me to expel one of the various types of laugh-responses, it wasn’t memorable.  At best, this film belabors the viewer.  Fortunately I didn’t directly watch “The Dead Don’t Die” because there are many other banal things I can think of that are better worth doing for 103 minutes of my time.

Also, “The Dead Don’t Die” performed so magnificently that it made my List Of Zombie Films To AVOID.

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Movie, Review, Zombies

Zombie With A Shotgun (2019)

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Zombie With A ShotgunWhen I heard about Zombie With A Shotgun, the title had me curious — it was a turn-around on the typical premise.  Usually the shotgun is used on the zombies, but in this case the zombie apparently has a shotgun.   The title also made me think of Hobo With A Shotgun.

I watched Zombie With A Shotgun on TubiTV — it was my first time using Tubi.  I had higher hopes about ZWAS because of the promotion I had seen online and the implied campiness.  Ultimately … the acting is thin, the dialogue delivery is hardly better, and the gratuitous Z-film boobs are further enhanced by some sort of hallucinations of lesbian kissing followed by some of the same Z-film boobs in the shower with boy-butt just to keep things in balance.  Outside of that, I barely have an idea what the point of the film was.  Were this a book a friend referred to me I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t finish reading it.

I appreciate the independent film spirit — and I honestly believe that the film wants to be something.  It has a visual polish — a certain professional look — but everything else falls short.  It is as though the filmmakers had the right money, cameras, etc to make the film but the story writing and actors weren’t much better than most of the self-produced Z-films on YouTube.  The development of whatever the story is hardly makes sense even 30 minutes into the film and it’s only 79 minutes long.

Before I finished the film I already began debating if I would rate Zombie With A Shotgun would receive my Red Blood or Yellow Puss zombie-film rating. Conclusion … maybe I need to come up with some kind of orange rating.  ZWAS isn’t a great zombie film, but there are worse Z-films.

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ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (2019)

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OKAY — I finally got to see Zombieland: Double Tap!  Do some stretches, grab some Twinkies, and let’s dive in…

When any first film was an original and a hit, there’s a challenge to making Film 2.  The filmmakers can’t half-ass it and make a reheat of the first film — they have to kick-it-up a notch.  They need to bring something new to the story, not change too much from the original, and go deeper with the journey the viewer went on the first time.  In this Bagpiper Zombie-film Reviewer’s Blog opinion Zombieland: Double Tap had a bit of an interesting time navigating these concepts …

Little Rock, Wichita, Tallahassee, and Columbus

We find the main characters from Zombieland (2009) about 10 years in the future — which fits in that it’s been about 10 years between the two films.  Tallahassee, Columbus, and Wichita are living together as Little Rock is reaching her 18th birthday.  Things go bad — as they always do in zombie films — and the sequel story is off and running.

Beyond this information I’m not going to risk any spoilers … so let’s get back to what I think of the film …. which, I presume you want to know or you wouldn’t have read this far.

There’s a well written review by arabnikita at IMDB titled “Sometimes less is more and not every movie needs a sequel” that sums things up well.  Arabnikita gave the film 6 out of 10 stars and writes …

“When Zombieland came out in 2009 it was able to break the routine of zombie films by using an unorthodox style with its quirky dialogues, rules and storytelling. It was wild, fresh and most inportantly fun … but sadly, the story leaves a lot more to be desired.”
(And you know I copied and pasted that writing because ‘importantly’ has a spelling mistake.)

Big Fat Death monster truck

The ZL2 is a continuation of ZL1 — we get to see the same beloved characters, and they go on a road trip.  The quirk of the characters is brought further out by many of them running into their doppelgangers — which bring added comedy, dynamic, and … frankly … sex appeal.  ZL2 doesn’t quite amp things up from ZL1 but to make up for that in a story-fitting and story-progressing way the zombies have evolved into different dangerous types.  That and some memorable Zombieland vehicles …. and some new Rules.

So in 2030 are we going to get “Zombieland: Hat-Trick“?  Who knows — and I’d probably watch that, too.  As for Zombieland: Double Tap, I’m probably more glad than sad that it was made Vs not made, and I got a kick out of watching it.  If you’re a Z-film fan and you enjoyed ZL1, I’d say Watch It — but don’t get your hopes up too high, which is why I rate it Yellow Puss.

If nothing else, watch the film for Emma Stone …. to be supportive of her career, of course.

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RAMPANT (2018)

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So here’s my take on Rampant . . .

According to Wikipedia “Rampant is a 2018 South Korean period action zombie film directed by Kim Sung-hoon. It was released on October 25, 2018. The film features a clash between exiled prince Lee Chung and the Joseon Minister of War Kim Ja-joon with the backdrop of a spreading zombie plague.”

I like foreign films.  I don’t always have the patience for foreign films.  This looked like it was probably a well made film before I called it quits on it.

That’s the extent of my review.

I rate it Yellow Puss.

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The Dead 2: India (2013)

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HEY — if this reads a bit like a draft … it’s because it is!

Similar to The Dead (2010), I give this film a Yellow Puss/nearly Green Ooze score.

Similar story elements as the first film however seems that the Ford brothers have honed their craft both with storytelling and film making

A good looking American engineer is working in an economically depressed foreign country, he must make his way out with the assumption that he can get to safety

In this movie, the action is set in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

Uses local talent as part of the story line more than The Dead (2010) — which is really clever if you think about it.  This and the first piece were made by independent film makers for rather little money.  By going to these other countries and writing stories that work within the local atmosphere the can get more resources and actors, making a bigger film for less money.  When it comes to India, bear in mind that Bollywood produces some goofy stuff, they also produce skilled actors, quite a few more films annually than HolloWood, and nearly-as-good special effects for less money.

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Once again the production encountered a number of problems.  Most of the extras playing zombies were not proficient in English and required translators.  Joseph Millson also mentioned that they did not get a permit from the Indian Government to shoot the movie in India.

If National Geographic made a travel show through a foreign country ravaged by zombies, it would be this film

Movie, Review, Zombies

Undead (2003)

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PSST — if this reads like a draft, it’s because it is — I never went back to finish writing it …. so I figured better to publish this than nothing!

Undead (2003 – US release 2005 … shucks, why’d we have to wait?!?)

Undead is a 2003 Australian zombie science fiction comedy horror film written and directed by Michael and Peter Spierig and starring Felicity Mason, Mungo McKay and Rob Jenkins.

(Not to be confused with the 1957 horror film, The Undead (film).)

Budget AUD $1 million (which in USD that’s $0.75 million)

A fisherman punching zombie fish and when that doesn’t work he starts shooting them …. and then inconveniently gets abducted by aliens.  I hate it when that happens …

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