Dead Zone

It's clearly a low budget B film, and considering it's a Tubi original "free" production, it wasn't too shabby. The camera-work was a little too shaky and the editing could've been better, but the pacing was decent for the comfortable 83 min runtime. Even the cinematography, score and directing were decent. Sure the writing had some issues, but with the adequate S/VFX, gore and MJW's awesome action scenes, as well as all cast performances being spot-on, it was still an enjoyable one-time watch. Anyone giving this film one's and two's needs to learn how to count higher. I've paid to see much worse, so I'm not complaining to watch something for free produced by Tubi's shoestring budget with a watchable and suspenseful story and decent actors. It's a well deserved 6/10 from me. Thanks Tubi, please keep them coming.

Right, well a zombie movie with Michael Jai White in the leading role, what isn't there to like here?

Sure, as I sat down to watch the 2022 action horror movie "Dead Zone", I had never heard about it. But seeing it was a zombie movie, of course I had to watch it. And seeing that Michael Jai White was on the cast list, well that was just a great bonus.

The storyline in "Dead Zone", as written by Jeffrey Giles, Michael Klug and Michael Lurie, was pretty much as generic and unimaginative as you could get. This was textbook how-to-make-a-zombie-movie, right down to the letter. And that didn't make for a particularly good movie. Nay, this was pretty stale and cumbersome.

Aside from a very bland and monotonous storyline, then the character gallery in the movie was pretty weak. I honestly didn't care one bit about any of the character, and I don't even remember their names, and I have literally just gotten out of my seat from having sat down to watch "Dead Zone".

The acting performances in the movie were fairly wooden and rigid, and I do wonder how come Michael Jai White is showing up in so many dubious movies these years. Don't expect to be in for a grand cinematic experience of Shakespearian levels when (and if) you sit down to watch "Dead Zone".

The special effects in the movie were fairly limited, feeling like the movie was on a very strict and tight budget. Having made use of more elaborate and spectacular special effects and CGI might have done wonders for an otherwise stale movie experience. And as for the infected in the movie, they were as low-key as you get, and it just made the ordeal feel very amateurish.

If you enjoy zombie movies, like I do, then do yourself a favor and steer clear of "Dead Zone". Believe me, it simply isn't worth the effort, time or money.

My rating of "Dead Zone" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.

This is an odd one. It's by far not the worst movie I've ever seen.

In fact it had all the right things going for it. Everything you'd expect in a movie: good premise, good sets, decent actors, decent script, music that actually fits, zombies, gunplay, explosions, intelligent characters, cool costumes, future tech, the list goes on. But somehow it missed the mark.

I can't quite put my finger on what was missing. Like soup without the salt. Or a pencil turned the wrong way on the desk. It affects everything else, but you can't quite see it by itself. It left me with a feeling that I had watched the reflection of a great movie. It looked like the movie it was reflecting, but it wasn't the real movie.

Like running a movie from memory: you get all the main points and it's all there, but it doesn't feel like you're watching a movie. That's the feeling I got from this one. It would've only needed just a little oomph to hit that mark, but it didn't. So it ended up being an okay zombie movie. Not the worst, but nowhere near the gold standard of Resident Evil.

I watched my first (and last) Tubi Original with the zombie-action flick DEAD ZONE (2022) "starring" Michael Jai White. I say "starring" because White is in the entire film but probably only shown on screen for 13 minutes. The rest of the time, he is suited up in a Halo cosplay outfit with a fogged out visor, no doubt to cover the fact it is a double and he probably worked a day or two on this in Colorado. They also do some Iron Man Jarvis-like inserts of his face. I understand that White has a family and they have to eat, but this is really rough stuff. Director Hank Braxtan (Snake Outta Compton...yes, a real movie title) stages things so poorly with the entire commando unit decked out in identical outfits (except for leader White having a red stripe down his helmet), so you can't even tell who is who. Probably on purpose. Replete with bad action scenes, shoddy CGI and a haggard looking Jeff Fahey cameo, it feels like it was a SyFy movie lost in the editing bay in 2005 and recently recovered.

I've seen all this before... imagine low-budget versions of Halo, Doom and Resident evil combined. Voila, a moneymaker without anything new. Not recommended unless you've somehow missed all those movies, in which case it might seem original.