SimonK101
Joined May 2020
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Reviews6
SimonK101's rating
I didn't really enjoy this one. It felt quite b-movie.
From a writing perspective, the characters don't feel very real or fleshed out. They don't go on any real arc, face much hardship or struggle, discover anything interesting about themselves, bond in any particularly meaningful way etc. It's all very understated and light-hearted. Our troubled problem child is never really any trouble at all and tbh seems pleasant from start to finish. Sam Neil's character is a monotone grump, slowly warming to the kid, but no more so than anyone else would in the scenario since he's a pleasant chap. The story is straightforward so no surprises there.
I guess that's all fine, as it's just an easy-going vehicle for the comedy, but it's really not all that funny. There were some bits in the script which I thought were actually pretty witty, but the jokes always fell flat. You generally have to like someone to find these kind of jokes funny and I never got into the characters.
It must be a Kiwi thing. As a Brit, I'm guessing I don't get the nuance of the character stereotypes or the delivery. So consider this just another "meh" opinion 50% of people won't agree with, just here to balance out what feels like lopsided praise.
From a writing perspective, the characters don't feel very real or fleshed out. They don't go on any real arc, face much hardship or struggle, discover anything interesting about themselves, bond in any particularly meaningful way etc. It's all very understated and light-hearted. Our troubled problem child is never really any trouble at all and tbh seems pleasant from start to finish. Sam Neil's character is a monotone grump, slowly warming to the kid, but no more so than anyone else would in the scenario since he's a pleasant chap. The story is straightforward so no surprises there.
I guess that's all fine, as it's just an easy-going vehicle for the comedy, but it's really not all that funny. There were some bits in the script which I thought were actually pretty witty, but the jokes always fell flat. You generally have to like someone to find these kind of jokes funny and I never got into the characters.
It must be a Kiwi thing. As a Brit, I'm guessing I don't get the nuance of the character stereotypes or the delivery. So consider this just another "meh" opinion 50% of people won't agree with, just here to balance out what feels like lopsided praise.
I can imagine this movie was awesome in its time. However, in 2025 we've seen all these kind of scenes a million times, and they're no longer as gripping as they would've been back then. Each chase scene, which may take 5 minutes to unfold, would be edited down to 30 seconds or less in a modern movie. I found myself thinking "Ok, I get it ... carry on with the story" each time we cut from truck to car and back again for the tenth time. While you feel like you're watching something of quality from a bygone era, it's quite tedious to sit through the chase scenes.
My 5/10 reflects this. If this was released today, I think everyone would be saying "There's not enough content to justify the runtime" and "Should've been a 30 minute short".
My 5/10 reflects this. If this was released today, I think everyone would be saying "There's not enough content to justify the runtime" and "Should've been a 30 minute short".
The Walking Dead got boring for me when the writing made the characters, scenarios and actions cheap and unbelievable. For me, Season 6 was the last watchable season. Die-hards could obviously suspend their disbelief and enjoy the rest of the show, but I couldn't. In any case, I hoped Daryl Dixon would be a return to believable writing. Unfortunately, it still seems to be written by people with zero care for credibility and details.
Within the first few minutes I found myself disappointed by:
Daryl came drifting in on a capsized boat apparently from America. Ok, let's just ignore that for now.
He gets ashore and goes straight for an upturned bucket of water metres from the lapping waves. Salt water obviously! He's gonna spit it up! Silly Daryl, but an understandable mistake if you're dehydrated. Oh no, it's fresh water. Obviously it's rained a lot recently and the tide has never come in. Ok, we'll just ignore that.
He investigates a boat which has empty wine bottles neatly put away and then decides to listen to a Dictaphone which he somehow finds working batteries for (?!). The tape is obviously at the perfect place to hear what the speaker needs to say to summarize why the boat is there. Great.
He then records a boring message to nobody because nobody he knows could ever possibly find the tape ... and it's a good job too, because the message is so pointless they might die of existential crisis if they ever listened to it.
He goes into a building. There are no zombies. Shortly afterwards all the zombies teleport in from outer space to surround him. Ahh the old "we can't be bothered to setup a good way for you to be surrounded by zombies so we'll just teleport them in from outer space when you're in the middle of the room" technique.
He kills them all easily, of course. Suspense is a thing of the past since anyone from TWD is basically knife ninja at this point. But actually they bleed acid or boiling blood or something, so we're obviously going to be ignoring biological feasibility just so we can have something new forced in ... new but also, stolen from Alien.
He meets a French woman and old man who are not at all worried by him. Some bad people we don't care about turn up and get stabbed in the head. Our friendlies are actually double crossers. They knock him out rather than kill him because that's a practical thing to do ... and bludgeoning someone over the head with a massive club is not a big deal anymore for Daryl. He'll be fine, although that same strike will obliterate the cranium of a zombie. An acid leaking zombie from Alien.
Some nun with a gun is there, sticking signs from her printing press about god on things. This nun is obviously an English person pretending to be French, as is the kid with a Rubix cube who has the worst French accent I've ever heard.
Daryl says a bunch more boring stuff and has a bath.
I don't consider this all "spoilers" since it happens in the first 10 minutes or so. Also, how can you spoil a plot when the plot doesn't actually exist?
I mean, it's fine if you don't care about details, believability, or depth. If you just want to see a guy you're familiar with go from set piece A to set-piece B having basic conversations with uninteresting people and stabbing zombies in the head, I guess it ticks those boxes. I was hoping for way more, like the good ol' days of the early seasons that I miss so much.
Within the first few minutes I found myself disappointed by:
Daryl came drifting in on a capsized boat apparently from America. Ok, let's just ignore that for now.
He gets ashore and goes straight for an upturned bucket of water metres from the lapping waves. Salt water obviously! He's gonna spit it up! Silly Daryl, but an understandable mistake if you're dehydrated. Oh no, it's fresh water. Obviously it's rained a lot recently and the tide has never come in. Ok, we'll just ignore that.
He investigates a boat which has empty wine bottles neatly put away and then decides to listen to a Dictaphone which he somehow finds working batteries for (?!). The tape is obviously at the perfect place to hear what the speaker needs to say to summarize why the boat is there. Great.
He then records a boring message to nobody because nobody he knows could ever possibly find the tape ... and it's a good job too, because the message is so pointless they might die of existential crisis if they ever listened to it.
He goes into a building. There are no zombies. Shortly afterwards all the zombies teleport in from outer space to surround him. Ahh the old "we can't be bothered to setup a good way for you to be surrounded by zombies so we'll just teleport them in from outer space when you're in the middle of the room" technique.
He kills them all easily, of course. Suspense is a thing of the past since anyone from TWD is basically knife ninja at this point. But actually they bleed acid or boiling blood or something, so we're obviously going to be ignoring biological feasibility just so we can have something new forced in ... new but also, stolen from Alien.
He meets a French woman and old man who are not at all worried by him. Some bad people we don't care about turn up and get stabbed in the head. Our friendlies are actually double crossers. They knock him out rather than kill him because that's a practical thing to do ... and bludgeoning someone over the head with a massive club is not a big deal anymore for Daryl. He'll be fine, although that same strike will obliterate the cranium of a zombie. An acid leaking zombie from Alien.
Some nun with a gun is there, sticking signs from her printing press about god on things. This nun is obviously an English person pretending to be French, as is the kid with a Rubix cube who has the worst French accent I've ever heard.
Daryl says a bunch more boring stuff and has a bath.
I don't consider this all "spoilers" since it happens in the first 10 minutes or so. Also, how can you spoil a plot when the plot doesn't actually exist?
I mean, it's fine if you don't care about details, believability, or depth. If you just want to see a guy you're familiar with go from set piece A to set-piece B having basic conversations with uninteresting people and stabbing zombies in the head, I guess it ticks those boxes. I was hoping for way more, like the good ol' days of the early seasons that I miss so much.