Mr O is a real zombie movie aficionado so when it was his turn to choose a horror movie for our Halloween watches, I was not surprised that he went for the undead. This film is supposedly a re-imagining of the George A. Romeo classic Day of the Dead. Supposedly.
Zoe (Sophie Skelton) is an epidemiology resident in a hospital where she is forced to study Max (Johnathon Schaech). Max has unusually high levels of antibodies in his blood and he is also obsessed with Zoe to the point that he’s carved her name into his arm. There is no indication as to why he is obsessed with Zoe as she seems to be the most boring woman alive… but he is.
On the night of a residents’ party, a corpse reanimates signalling the advent of the zombie apocalypse. Somehow (because this bit is conveniently skipped over) Zoe finds herself in an military survivors’ outpost both playing doctor to the other residents and working on a cure for zombitis. Here she must rail against Miguel (Jeff Gum), the dictatorial outpost commander while engaged in a chemistry-free relationship with his brother, Baca (Marcus Vanco).
In a completely expected turn of events an infected Max finds his way to the outpost and… gasp… could he be the key to Zoe’s cure.
Where do I start with this absolutely turgid turd. There is zero character development. None whatsoever. The script is laughable and the acting is even worse. The depictions of Zoe’s response to being sexually assaulted suggest that director, Hèctor Hernández Vicens, failed to speak to any abuse survivors as part of the research for the film and may not actually have ever met any women. Also playing her discomfort in being faced by her attacker as a plot device is even more distasteful than the constant gratuitous onscreen disembowelments.
There is one scene where Zoe and Baca have a conversation about their childhoods and where they come from. This is despite the fact that they’ve supposedly been together for six months. What on earth have they been talking about in the interim? As Zoe is uncomfortable with intimacy, it’s not like it is a relationship overtaken with passion so you’d think they would have had some kind of knowledge of each other’s lives. I am not sure Vincens or the three credited writers has ever been in a relationship.
I am no doctor myself but I am pretty sure you can’t just knock together a vaccine in half an hour and then injected untested into a load of people. I get clinical trials aren’t an option under the circumstances but it seems that we are expected to believe Zoe is more like a magician than a fairly inexperienced doctor.
This movie is in no way scary… it’s just very, very gross. I do not recommend watching it to anyone with eyes. Avoid like the plague… the zombie plague…
0/5
abbiosbiston 
I would probably not have bothered anyway, but your review is the final nail in the zombie’s head for me, Abbi. I do like GOOD zombie films though. If Mr O is an aficionado, I expect he has seen ‘Train To Busan’? That’s my favourite zombie film ever! 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
He has seen train to Busan and really enjoyed it. He loves the original Dawn of the Dead though. That’s his favourite. This one was an embarrassment.