Shatter Dead

Hmmm. Where to start with this one. I just watched this flick for the first time last night and it left me a little uneasy. I am not sure if I am upset at myself for paying so much for a camcorder shot looooooooooooooooooooow budget flick, or if the movie actually had an effect on me.........I am still pondering that one.

For those who love extreme gore, action, and excitement.....this movie will probably not suit your fancy. I would not even call this movie a horror movie. There was nothing scary about it, nothing shocking (except for the gun up the muff scene)...I have seen it all before. I would consider this movie a dark comedy, even though I am sure Scooter did not intend for it to be funny. I mean the really bad acting and dialogue just has to be laughed at, especially Stark Raven and the Preacher Man. Some of the dialougue is just hilarious, like "don't be scared, I am scared." You just have to laugh.

Stark Raven is about as talented and sexy as a slab of cardboard (she's as flat as one too). Her gratuitous sex scenes sort of nauseated me because she is not in the least bit attractive....for once a movie would have been better without the female lead getting naked. The only thing that "shattered" in this movie is the mirror everytime Stark Raven looked in it (God, those teeth..........).

The clever storyline and idea behind this movie are strongly overshadowed by the lousy acting, camera work, and dialogue, and get left behind and forgotten quickly.

I mean, any movie with a guy dressed up like Howard Stern as Fartman with a gun cannot be taken seriously.

Worth a rent but not a buy. Nuff said.

When I borrowed a friend's copy of Shatter Dead, I expected to get some thrills of the zombie gore-fest variety. What I received was really really bad. It wasn't even good in a really really bad way. The first thing that upset and disgusted me was not blood or wanton violence but rather that it was shot on video, not film, immediately cheapening the whole experience. The pictures on the DVD case (yes, DVD) misled me into thinking that this would be a professional piece of work. I have seen many low-budget films, but this takes the prize for worst makeup. Some characters, many of which I'm sure were willing locals and student volunteers, donned grey paint on their skin. Others had some some cheap looking gashes about the face. Most, however were not made up at all. It was also very slow paced, a bit confusing and featured both flat staging and acting. It was hard to tell whether it was the poor acting or the poorly written lines ("Don't be scared, I'm scared too") were what made me want to turn it off.

Having ripped in to this movie quite a bit, it's only fair to share some highlights. Indeed writer/director, Scooter McRae puts an interesting spin on the old living dead yarn that discusses "souls" as being un-killable, despite condition of the body. It also receives my thumbs up for explicitly using, one more than one occasion, a hand gun as a phallus. It's also encouraging to any aspiring filmmaker to see the manifestation of McRae's ideas and labor, on DVD no less. I guess it won some sort of award, too. Bottom line, this flick is for hardcore low-budget horror fans only. If, on the other hand, a friend owns it you might want to watch it. If not for a laugh, then at least to broaden your filmic horizons.

More regrets:

I have to be the biggest sucker in the world. What other person would go out and buy so many of these backyard home video horror movies? Why did I buy into all the hype that these little genre websites give to these pieces of garbage!?

Well I've learned my lesson. Yes, I was an idiot to go out and buy so many of these films but having done so, I feel safe in saying that any positive reviews that junk like this gets has to be written by cast members or the directors themselves because there's no way anyone besides people involved who could actually like this crap.

First off, this is not a movie for fans of traditional zombie films! Shatter Dead is a cheap looking home video. It's not a horror film in any sense, it's nothing more then a wanna be art film. It's got the most vile looking cast ever assembled to carry the lame story forward. It's got the lowest production values I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of these type films lately. There was no way of getting behind any of the character's because they all sucked! A bunch of art film school students making a video in their backyard. Nothing more!!! The only good thing about this garbage was the DVD sleeve which worked like a charm in suckering me into buying it.

If one is desperate for a z-grade zombie film then they'd be better to look into MEAT MARKET 2 which I also recently bought. While that movie was nothing great either, it's at least a zombie film that entertains the viewer. Shatter Dead does nothing but annoy and bore the viewer.

0/10 AVOID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had heard that this movie was so cool and creative, so I had high expectations. I was immediately disappointed when the movie started and the picture looked like it was filmed by a camcorder. The female lead's acting is so bad, I contemplated turning the dvd off. That bad. I kept on watching because I paid a pretty penny (more than the average price for a dvd) to get a copy of this movie (from the distributor). I also wanted to see if the story and gore were any good. Good luck. The story is about a girl trying to get back to her apartment, that's it. There was some crappy gore and a xxx scene involving the female lead, her boyfriend and a pistol (a pellet handgun in reality). You can probably figure out the rest. I threw away the dvd, just as I threw away my money when I bought it.

After hearing much hype about this supposedly graphic yet thoughtful zombie movie I gave it a shot, much to my dismay.

Strait-jacking Romero's infamous 'Dawn of the Dead' line about there being no more room in hell for it's plot, 'Shatter Dead' follows the exploits of a rather unpleasant female as she attempts to get to her boyfriend in a world were the dead don't die. Along the way she meets assorted boring humans, a wack-job preacher, and some living dead just trying to get by.

The film tries for high-concept, but lays limp at low-execution. The locations look like spots near the director's home, the actors don't ever act, the script is thin past the set up, the gore FX aren't convincing, the direction is uninspired, etc, etc. Just nothing about it ever works. The film could have tried to rely upon the strength of the set-up to at least flirt with some existential examination, but instead the filmmakers fall back on dime-novel psycho-babble and pseudo-religious rhetoric.

As far as providing exploitive thrills, yet again the promise is not delivered. There is some violence and blood/gore, but it's cheaply executed and badly edited together. On the sexploitive front, things fare no better. While there is a fair amount of nudity, it is mostly of the lead female who (I am sorry to say) is not very attractive. For the whole movie only one bit, just one, actually stood out; a late movie sex scene where a blood drained zombie male is forced to strap on a hand-gun in order to engage in intercourse. That one blurb of exploitive lunacy accounts for the 2 rating.

Not much of a horror movie, not much of a sexploitive movie...just not much of a movie.

2/10