Dead Zone

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.

Greetings from the other side. Firstly, I think they should have picked a better name for this movie. Dead Zone is a Stephen King movie, and TV series, so not the best choice in my opinion.

Regardless of the name, this movie is terrible and boring as hell. I'm not a fan of Michael J White, but we hardly see him anyways, because of the Halo-type suits they wear. We hear him talking, and see a close-up of his face in the fancy Heads-up-display helmet, just like Iron Man, which is cheating. Anything to save a buck I guess.

I'm at the 40 minute mark and hardly anything has happened. It's dark all the time, and we don't get a good look at the zombies. We see them running around at a distance, I read another review that said there's some action at the 47 minute mark, which would be a treat.

Anyways, I can't recommend this movie, especially since I might not be able to watch the Entire thing. It's now at the 52 minute mark and still no action, so the other reviewer was wrong with his time. It doesn't matter since I'm done with it.

Even fans of Michael Jai White must admit that this is a real stinker, as nothing works in this movie. Jai White is cool of course, and riffs off some cool military lingo like "ceilings & sixes", while making all the cool military hand signs (backwards fist for "hold up" ; two fingers pointed at the eyes for "look this way" etc but their equipment doesn't work and the dialog is presented from inside their helmets. The shot/counter-shot is quite tedious especially with the audio and the breathing apparatus malfunctioning. The special effects are lousy with the enemy creature being a really bad knock-off combination of Alien/Predator obviously portrayed by a man in a monster mask. Most of the footage is so dark that it is a strain to watch. 2 stars for Jai White who always wins.

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.

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.