Zone of the Dead

InterPol agents join forces with a dangerous prisoner to fend off the zombie hordes.

Zone of the Dead is a zombie actioner produced in Serbia. Many low budget zombie films are still effective, however, Zone of Dead isn't one of them and is poorly put together.

Stefano Caprioli's score is good but it's unevenly placed over the film, at times distracting. The same can be said for the sound. The make up effects are well done and the setting adds atmosphere. There's a handful of sets ups with a little sword and gun play. Milan Todorovic and Vukota Brajovic's story is adequate. Directors Milan Konjevic and Milan Todorovic over use the shaky cam look and there's no getting away from Konjevic's sub-par screenplay.

Kristina Klebe as Agent Mina Milius lights up the screen and of course there's Ken Foree but they can't save that poor script which is badly delivered by the majority of rest of the cast.

It faults are to distracting for you to sit back and enjoy it as much as it may deserve. All the ingredients are there but someone wasn't watching the cooking times. True DTV hell.

The good thing about zombie films is that they're inherently entertaining. Even the really poor ones are often unintentionally amusing, like Bruno Mattei's hopeless Italian efforts. So when it came to watching APOCALYPSE OF THE DEAD, a retitled version of the 2009 film ZONE OF THE DEAD, I was in high spirits. I knew that it was a cheap and cheerful B-movie, I wasn't expecting too much from it, and I was fully prepared to disengage my brain and have a good time.

It's worth noting that this is Serbia's first zombie film, although don't let that excite you too much; as with much foreign fare these days, it's content to rip-off American content, inevitably in this case Romero's dead trilogy (which is referenced at numerous points in the narrative). In case the similarities weren't strong enough already, the producers also cast DAWN OF THE DEAD's Ken Foree in a leading role here. I have a lot of goodwill towards Foree for his role in that movie, so I was even more interested in watching this as the credits rolled.

It's not really surprising that this film doesn't turn out to be very good at all. It's a classic B-movie in the sense that everything that takes place is familiar from other, better productions; one film that's content to rip-off rather than try its hand at something more original. The story of a zombie outbreak is told on the cheap, as a group of rather uninteresting characters barricade themselves inside a police station and try to figure out what to do about the ravenous creatures outside.

Sadly, the predictable storyline is made worse by the two directors, who seem unable to give their film any suspense or real drive. Time and again they have long, drawn-out conversations take place between people while zombies approach in the background. Now, in an effective zombie film, everything would be about the potential menace and the need to get away as quickly as possible from the threat, but here the characters chat away as if they haven't got a care in the world. It makes for boring viewing.

The performances are pretty much what you'd expect from an ultra-cheap film of this sort, the characterisation is half-hearted and unrealistic, and the joke-shop effects aren't really worth writing home about either. The film also feels rather restrained, despite one or two unpleasant moments, and even Foree himself isn't very good; he seems tired and subdued, and he isn't a patch on the menacing character he played in Romero's movie. You feel sorry for him, in a way, for wasting his time appearing in such instantly forgettable dreck.

This is a cheap, poor, unoriginal direct-to-DVD ultra-low budgeter that will satisfy only the most undemanding. If you liked the ugly, careless Italian zombie flicks from the early 1980s made by Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei, this is a perfect match to that kind of dated, barely competent attempt at exploitation. It is not entirely without its saving graces: Ken Foree is as good as the silly, uninventive script and laughable dialogues allow; make-up efx are solid, but barely visibly because of the overuse of shaky-cam which spoils every action scene. Photography is dark, grainy and shaky, and the Tarzan-English spoken by the Serbian actors can be compared to the Engrish found in Miike's SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO. Solid potentials are largely wasted in this silly little flick.

Firstly the good news. Ken Foree is an absolute legend and it's great to see him returning to the zombie horror genre.

And now for the bad news, which is absolutely everything else. Having read some good reviews on this film, I decided to give it a go as I'm a big fan of zombie flicks even bad ones. It isn't often that I can't watch a film to the end (The Country Bears being the last one - I even made it through the Squeakquel) but at the half way mark I felt like eating my own head. Around two thirds of the way through I couldn't take any more and fast forwarded through the rest, stopping every so often to see if it improved. It didn't.

Allow me to list off some of the things that made this the worst movie I have ever seen.

1. The dubbing. At least I hope it was all dubbed. If these idiots really speak like this, they should all be shot.

2. The acting. OMG! Where did they get these muppets from? Everything was wrong and I do realise that zombie movies rarely get Oscar nominations. The body language was completely wooden - not one person (including Ken) managed to look like they really were in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. They looked like they were taking part in a primary school play and a bad one at that.

3. The plot. Seems like the same terrible primary school did the screen writing as well. If you were responsible for the script then you should be ashamed. Never, ever write anything again. I mean it. Put the pen down. Bite your fingers off. You'll be doing us all a favour.

If I can prevent one person from ever having to go through watching this drivel, then I can rest easy knowing my sacrifice wasn't in vain.

You've been warned...

First off, I like zombie movies and understand that they tend to be less-than perfect. Even so, this one is pretty bad. The acting is wooden and uninspired, the effects only so-so and the plot isn't very original at all.

The lighting is also quite bad.

I'm not sure what else to say about it except that the majority of the voters here must have been involved in the production because 5.9 is an unbelievably high number for this film. If you were involved in this film, please do not ever take part in any films in the future! And please refrain from voting up a stinker like this. Thank you.