Actually Quite Watchable —
Mister Uwe Boll (Click here for Uwe’s Influx interview) doesn’t always make the greatest of movies, but they are generally watchable. Boll has only produced Apocalypse Z (Originally titled Zombie Massacre) but it looks like he’s given some input. Uwe Boll’s last movie was the decent Assault on Wall Street, but this $1.3 million indie is one of the better examples of this genre, as it mixes action with great looking Zombies. If you take into account the fact that it’s a straight to disc, low budget horror, you have to accept that Apocalypse Z is a bit better than most films of this fare. It isn’t a film I would gleefully add to my Bluray collection but it is a film you can enjoy at home with the lights out.
General Carter needs to assemble a team of soldiers to go into a Zombie infected nuclear power plant with an Atomic Bomb. A bacteriological weapon has been created, (developed by the nasty US Government) but it has spread among the staff causing a Zombie epidemic. The infectees are now wandering around a quiet little town in Eastern Europe and now the entire population are turned into infected Zombies. The General orders them to blow the place off the map, whereby the power plant will ultimately get blamed for the disaster. The mercenaries are a mixture of cliches, with a Warrior Princess type who wields a pair of Samurai swords. Eden Shizuka (Tara Cardinal) plays the silent assassin who we’re supposed to believe has some oriental blood in her, going by the Shizuka name she has. This being such a low budget movie there clearly wasn’t time for sword fighting lessons as our heroine thrusts and parries rather clumblessly, but as I said, it isn’t the type of studio flick where actors attend 4 week courses on battle technique.
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The directing and writing duo of Luca Boni and Marco Ristori have made one film prior to this, but they have clearly moved up in the world, with this being flawed but nothing irredeemable and mostly quite good. The pacing was perhaps a touch slow here and there, but it is only their second movie, so a lot can be forgiven. They have put a lot of effort into making this, as they coaxed halfway decent performances from the actors, but the makeup was extremely good, and is well worth seeing this movie for. The closest I’ve seen to this was in 13 Eerie, another low budget Zombie flick which has great makeup. The effects and makeup team are to be commended.
I have one major gripe (other than some of the performances) which involves the accents used by so called US nationals. I think it’s a very good thing for actors to use their own accents, but to claim to be the US president with a strong German accent is stretching it, even for Mr President Uwe Boll himself! Even so, It’s well worth a watch. It goes on general DVD release on 6 August 2013 in the US.
Grade: C+
Review by Ed Blackadder
