Festival of the Living Dead

A Jen & Sylvia Soska directed film which suffers from the fact Jen & Sylvia Soska are not the writers.

After Rabid, the Iconic American Mary and Dead Hooker in the Trunk my hope are always high when Soska Sisters release a new film. I love the Living Dead films so when this was announced almost a year ago I thought we were in for a treat.

There is some good casting in places, some decent practical effects but it's all let down by the script.

This doesn't feel like a modern horror where the protagonists make smart choices. This Jars especially as some are supposed to be the descendants of Ben from Night Of The Living Dead.

This feels more like a Tubi Original rather than a Soska Sisters film.

Im twenty minutes in and I'm ready for all these characters to get eaten alive by zombies. I don't see a lick of talent between the lot of them.

I think this movie is going for a blood fest/hellfest vibe but failed miserably with the lack of campiness and likeable characters. There is an overarching lack of plot and the characters consistently make irrational decisions.

Somehow 10 seconds after a violent car accident the blood on the characters is already dry on their face, not sure they thought that one through.

To be honest the commercials on Tubi are a nice break from this movie. I can say with 100% certainty I will never watch this movie again, and I recommend you avoid it.

Plot holes galore. Unlikeable characters and dumb script.

Soska Sisters haven't made a decent film since the entertaining AMERICAN MARY. Rabid was an insult to the original and Dead Hooker in a Trunk was just ok.

This has so many annoying parts it just spoils the whole thing.

Unlikeable characters who don't seem to like each other at all so why are they friends or together!?

The script is lazy and full of holes and the charactersaking more than. Your normal dumb decisions.

The acting is bearable (except that awful actor the Soska Sisters keep using) who this time was blessedly only in it briefly as a Zombie Paramedic. (He is the worst wooden actor out there, ruins any scene or film he is in.

This could have been fun.

A festival to celebrate the memory of all those killed in the '68 Zombie outbreak. (Seemingly suppressed and dormant ever since) Yet meteors bring it all out again which just happens to coincide with the Festival (Right!!) Some cheap but ok looking practical FX makes for a couple of ok death scenes but it's all so background and edited so quickly don't see much. Maybe because not best quality FX.

Couple of ok gore gags.

You usual trend of diversity inclusions are here but don't feel forced like most others and aren't distracting so that's good.

It's a shame.

I wanted to like it but was left disappointed and struggled to keep my attention. I simply didn't care for the characters at all. The main lead was cute but that it. Rest were cliché after cliché.

I remember Return of the Living Dead 2 Rave to the Grave having a similar feeling. And YouTube series Zombie Rave/ Beyond the Rave having similar theme but with vampires.

Soska sisters had potential to become a popular name after the fun American Mary but seem to be taking a step backwards every film they do. And now seem destined to survive in low budget Tubi level hell. Maybe they are happy with that. But I think it's a shame as they had potential. Need to work with better scripts and better actors if wish to continue imo.

Heading to a special festival, a group of friends get into an accident along the way which requires them to stop at the festival earlier than expected, but when a zombie outbreak stalls their plans by putting them into the scenario it forces them to fight back against the creatures to get away alive.

There wasn't a whole lot to this one that worked. One of the few likable factors here is the general setup and output of the zombie action within this one that develops at a solid enough pace. The zombie action is pretty constant throughout here as the initial outbreak occurs from the very start and happens to go through a series of solid and frantic encounters that take place on the grounds of the festival and surrounding areas which provides this with some fun scenarios. The swarming action here is quite solid as there are some fun moments when they take out the festival, follow the group through the surrounding woods, and the series of encounters when trying to get to safety that showcases the fun of the practical effects-driven features where the constant flesh-ripping, devouring, and full-on wounds offer some rather fun moments involving fantastic effects-work. These all manage to bring about some great aspects here even though this one has a lot of drawbacks that hold it back. This mainly stems from the fact that none of the characters here come across as anything resembling normal human beings. With a time-honored trope of a group of teenagers that are barely able to go five seconds without acting like irresponsible douchebags more concerned with themselves than anyone else around, display an alarming sense of self-centered interactions that make for a truly moronic series of decision-making skills, or demonstrating such a profound lack of situational awareness that it's nearly impossible to believe they're friends, it takes very little time at all before they're considered disposable. That shouldn't be surprising considering the source material for the film and the friends throughout here but it doesn't make the film any easier to get through, especially when everyone starts arguing with each other in the middle of everything. That ties into the other issue with this one in how there's so little that ties into the original that it feels incredibly flimsy to tie this with the franchise. The lack of explanation for the zombies is a solid touch but beyond that, there's almost nothing here with the zombies themselves behaving quite unlike the original creatures who can run and think, plan out attacks, or just flat out appear out of nowhere to launch a surprise attack in the middle of a scene which doesn't do anything like how the original interacted. The attempts at connecting it back through storyline means are immensely flimsy with some bizarre and awkward choices, and it all comes to a head with the backward political commentary on high-school cliques as a means of trying to make a statement like the original did. However, this is such a moronic hill to stand on any attempt to say something about it is lame and feels quite artificial. These are all enough to bring this one down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Pointless. Stupid. A disaster. The list is endless in describing this dumpster fire of a film. The sad part is the lame attempt to connect it to Night of the Living Dead which left me in stitches, because overall, Festival of the Living Dead winds up as yet another lazy, inconsistent crappy "zombie" film, with horrible characters, horrible writing and cringe-worthy dialogue. It's an absolute MESS.

The film just speaks loudly to how the Soska sisters don't even try. How they continue directing is baffling. They've spoken so highly of George A. Romero (and of course Cronenberg, with their awful remake of Rabid), yet fail in making anything good or memorable. Every film they produce just shows us how they're pretty much a one-hit wonder with American Mary. Please stop.