I am a big fan of zombie films and even own over 50 of them on DVD, but it's one of those genres like vampires where every one and their brother seems to be taking a camcorder and making one in their backyard. There are great zombie films and downright awful ones and this falls into the middle (putting it way ahead of some low budget garbage I've sat through). It's not as good as some indie zombies & aliens films like "Undead", but to be fair, that film had a one million dollar budget and this most obviously did not have the same level of resources to draw upon.
This production was plagued with problems and took 4 years to complete. It's not a bad film per se, just not one whose story particularly interests me. It's an achievement for those involved that they finished it at all and the technical aspects of it are better than many no-budget zombie films (often shot-on-video) being made these days -- films like "Stink of Flesh" or the simply atrocious "Dead Life", which aren't much worth watching unless you want a course in how NOT to make a film. Sequels in name only like "Day of the Dead 2: Contagium", "House of the Dead 2" and "Return of the Living Dead 4 & 5" also fit into said category, yet were made with bigger budgets thereby making their failures even more egregious. Plaga Zombie: Mutant Zone achieves its artistic goals far better than those films.
THE STORY: Here is where I had most of my problems with the film... Yes, some of the stuff is downright goofy, but that in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. I REALLY don't care for pro-wrestling as a sport in general (be it American or of the Spanish or Mexican luchador variety which didn't endear me to the no-budget zombie film "Enter Zombie King"). I have zero interest in seeing two potentially gay fan boys fight over a luchador whose career is ended. I'd just as soon want to watch a film that wants me to feel sorry for a H.S. football captain who, after being the big shot at school, has gone on to work selling tires or working a gas station, his glory days behind him and then watch a fan boy following him around like he's still a big deal and then add zombies to the equation. Obviously, the film never connected me to this major character and as a result I had difficulty connecting to the film itself, though others may really enjoy it. But I will have to say the set decoration for John West's trophy room was well done. I loved the idea of a single floppy disk holding pertinent info necessary to the characters' survival and which takes 12 hours to 'decode' itself (I'm obviously being sarcastic on that point, I hate when films do senseless things with computers). This was obviously one of those IDIOT PLOT POINTS to kill time and have characters run in circles to get them where the writer wanted them. I didn't enjoy the plot enough to be really looking forward to a 3rd film to finish the trilogy.
The Camera-work and FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY are both pretty good for a no-budget shot-on-video production. They seem to have a better idea what they are doing than most no budget zombie films.
MAKEUP: facial makeup (latex) is obviously low budget but an improvement over the face paint of the 1st film. The gore shots are decent for no budget and there are some entertaining effects shots.
DE-ANIMATION METHODS: not quite sure how to kill a zombie in this film, there seems to be lots of decapitation though.
This isn't a bad film and you may like it better than I did, I just wasn't big on the story. It's much better than lots of ultra low budget zombie films coming out in the past decade and it does have its technical merits which make me think the filmmakers could go on to better things if they keep at it.
