It should be no surprise that that Day of the Dead 2: Contagium rings in as another Yellow Puss. Probably it should be Red Blood. I’ll tell you what I have to say about this film, but first please read these which I found under “Reception” on Wikipedia….
Peter Dendle called DOTD2 Contagium a “boring, transparent feature” that was “forgotten almost as soon as it was released”.
Steve Barton of Dread Central rated it 0/5 stars and wrote, “This is a sequel in name only, created solely to generate revenue from ill informed fans.” Contagium
Joseph Savitski of Beyond Hollywood wrote that the film “is not only an exercise in incompetence, but also a blatant attempt at false advertising.”
Dennis Prince of DVD Verdict wrote, “There is no warning too strong that would urge you to avoid this DVD at all costs.”
So what does BagpiperDon think of Contagium?
Bearing in mind that this film hand a whole whopping $1M budget in 2005 — that should already tell you that this is a nothing film. It was confusing as to the significance in light of the 1985 “Day of the Dead” not to mention the “Day of the Dead” from 2008. It seems like a film that wants to have a few good new ideas to the genre. Also, it had the fun of being a simple, low-budget Z-film ….. but in the end… it’s a waste of time.
Remember how the cover for the first film has NOTHING to do with the film? Well, consistency is supposed to be good…
Have you ever had the experience where someone you know excitedly says “Hey, ya gotta see this film!“? Then once you watch it you’re left thinking “What the heck was that about?”, or worse “There is something SERIOUSLY WRONG with my friend!” Welcome to to World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2.
Immediately you can tell that this project has a higher budget and is visually more satisfying than the 2006 predecessor. Then you get into the story and you start to see the problems…
The first thing you notice — as with the original film — is that the DVD cover is once again horribly misleading. The cover art looks better than the film, and it represents something other than the content of the film.
I’m warning you — act like threatening zombies or we’ll shoot you!!!
The zombies feel very non-threatening — even less than in the original film. The make-up is insufficient, the scares nearly non-existent, and the zombies are often so stiff they would be played better by untrained department store mannequins. Add to that, when it comes to shooting the zombies I get the impression that the British film makers don’t have a clue as to what firearms sound like anymore (especially in the scene pictured). The firearm sound effects left me non-pulsed — perhaps they were just the on-location recording of the blanks the actors were firing.
The biggest downfall of the movie…
Yep, they should have stuck with this poster as the DVD cover
… aside from the emaciated plot and the you-are-there hand-held cinematography — are some of the specific content choices that film makers Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates included. Various gangs of survivors prove to be even more vile than the zombies. This is well summed up in a review by FlickeringMyth.com when they wrote…
“There are a couple of, frankly, unneeded rape scenes (one on a female zombie) that just felt like Bartlett and Gates wanted to do some kind of rape revenge film, but gave up and worked zombies into it”.
Frankly it left this bagpiper & humble amateur zombie-film reviewer astounded. I cannot recall feeling this disturbed by any zombie film I have previously seen. This content included a challenged young man bullied into delivering a beating upon one of the primary male characters, and then pushed into committing a graphic rape/murder on one of the female primaries. I have to wonder where the writer and his co-director think that this was appropriate, or fit within the film! I also have to wonder about the actors (or even the crew) assuming they saw the script before they agreed to do the film — why would they participate in bringing this film to fruition?
Is there any redemption for this film?
Me around people who smoke
There are elements to this film that really work — the albeit over-used zombie-trope military element, the military and civilian survivors trying to escape from England, and the guys who ambiguously appear wearing protective suits and gas masks. However it seems as though Bartlett and Gates thought that their ideas were so great — so sound — that they didn’t think to check their script or finished film with a third party. And if they did, they didn’t listen to them say “There’s some good stuff here, but over all THIS IS A BAD IDEA.” Or maybe they just half-assed it and figured this would fill a feature. In the end, it is as The Daily Mail described the film, it’s an “88 minute waste of electricity”, and I rate it Red Blood.
Seriously, I’m starting to think I ought to make a list titled “Zombie Films To Avoid Watching“. Do you think I would have this one on it? YOU BETTER BELIEVE IT!
A List Of Words Irrelevant To This Zombie Film
At least you see one of these folks in the film — but destroyed city, a massive horde of zombies? Nope nope-nope!
If you noticed one of the soldiers say in the beginning of this film that they’re in the “TA”, that stands for “Territorial Army” which is the UK equivalent of the Army Reserve.
Don’t bother with Nightmare Alley(2010). My impression of this “film” is that some people in the same low-rent apartment complex got together and made this film — shooting it, acting it, writing it, producing it — everything. There are some zombie cowboys in the first vignette, but the whole thing is maybe at best only worth lining the bottom of a trash can. Nightmare Alley (2010)
BagpiperDon rates Nightmare Alley as . . . Red Blood
Nightmare Alley can be found on IMDb. However, this film is so bad I couldn’t find it on Rotten Tomatoes. Be advised, this Nightmare Alley should not to be confused with the 1947 “Nightmare Alley“ by Tyrone Power.
Let’s make something absolutely clear up front — Survival Of The Dead is garbage. I rate it Red Blood, and it is on my List Of Zombie Films To AVOID.
What’s worse than that is that it clearly had a chunk of money behind it — not loads, but more money than many zombie films — which in my mind was money that could have been split to make at least 2 other cleverly-made lower budget better films.
The Core Problem — No Story
My impression of Survival Of The Dead is that someone — maybe their name was George — had a stack of admittedly clever zombie gags written down and sitting in a pile. This person wanted to use these in a film, but didn’t otherwise know how to pull it off — which frankly is what they should have done and just left well enough alone. However, they got together with their buddies — possibly there were a few beers in the room, possibly a few too many — and they had a brainstorming session that amounted to… “Okay, we’ll use the military ’cause that always flies in zombie films — oh, and to help it sell, everything Irish is popular right now, so let’s throw that in too!” Having concocted a shoddy story-line they got their funding and started rolling.
Close but … NOPE!
My guess is that’s how Survival Of The Dead got its start. But what, no gratuitous possibly-future-famous Z-film breasts to further sell this potboiler?!? I like bad film, but in this case I would prefer that whoever green-lighted this project read my review: don’t waste your company’s money and don’t waste the audience’s time.
The Story — Lacking Though It May Be…
Uh … this isn’t what it looks like.
Zombies have taken over the world. A ragtag band of soldiers roams the countryside to scavenging to survive. The unit is intrigued when they hear of a safe haven on an island off the coast of North America. Expecting to find a paradise, they instead find the island is torn apart by a wannabe Hatfield–McCoy family feud. One family wants to exterminate the zombies while the other thinks everyone can peacefully coexists with their undead relatives hoping for a cure to return their relatives back to their human state.
It should be no surprise that that Day of the Dead 2: Contagium rings in as another Yellow Puss. Probably it should be Red Blood. I’ll tell you what I have to say about this film, but first please read these which I found under “Reception” on Wikipedia….
Don’t bother with Nightmare Alley(2010). My impression of this “film” is that some people in the same low-rent apartment complex got together and made this film — shooting it, acting it, writing it, producing it — everything. There are some zombie cowboys in the first vignette, but the whole thing is maybe at best only worth lining the bottom of a trash can. 
