"Fight of the Living Dead" is a Frankenstein's monster of a series. Mercifully, it's only seven episodes.
The series drops 10 "famous" YouTubers and Vine stars in a zombie-infested hospital and tasks them with fast-paced challenges to get them to safety. From securing safe rooms to assembling a zombie-killing device, the show certainly keeps them busy. Or rather, CONOP, the fictional scientific/military organization the YouTubers and Viners are told is in charge, keeps them busy.
In its zombie premise and dedication to dropping at least one cast member an episode, the show's clearly influenced by the likes of "The Walking Dead" and its spin off show, "Fear the Walking Dead."
But in its video-confessional style and attempts to convince YouTube and Vine stars that what they are living is real, "Fight of the Living Dead" seems to mostly be a reality series first, zombie show second.
Nobody is remotely convincing in this show. Cast members start drama almost immediately, people begin taking it *way* too seriously, and the show goes to "Scare Pewdiepie" lengths and then some to try and sell its premise to its own cast.
If it tried to be either a reality show or a zombie show and didn't stitch the two genres so clumsily together, this might have worked. But instead, the rips in the proverbial dress show at every corner.
Character deaths are rushed and arbitrary, are given no weight, and due to the amount of prosthetics and makeup, they're obviously filmed separate from the rest of the series. Cameramen are present at every turn. When cast members are on deadly missions, we cut suddenly to their video confessionals, even though those same cast members die DURING THE MISSION WE ARE WATCHING and would therefore have no time to return to a camera and record the confessionals.
It's a lumbering, boring disappointment of a show. The acting is bad, the cast is unbearable, the writing is dull, the cliffhangers are unengaging and resolved too quickly, and the entire production reeks of the worst clichés and tropes of reality television.
It's a show that, after the first terrible episode, challenges you to sit through the other six.
