The Horde

I can't remember where I heard about this movie, but just look at that cover.  It looks fantastic, right?  Well, as The Zombie Diaries showed, you can't judge a low-budget zombie movie by its cover.
Really, this should have been a great movie.  It follows a group of police officers who decide to avenge their fallen comrade by killing the people who killed him.  Once they get to the building, the dead start coming back to life.  These aren't Romero's zombies.  They're undead, but they run, and they have superhuman strength.  The cops team up with the criminals in an attempt to survive.
Sounds good, right?
There are some decent scenes, but this movie just kind of annoyed me.  There wasn't much logic to the character's actions.  Their entire plan was to get out of the building...but they saw that the streets were filled with zombies.  So...you get out of the building.  Then what?  They never thought about that.  In one scene towards the end, the zombies apparently don't realize that they can climb on top of a car, which leads to a ton of zombies standing around getting shot and butchered (in a scene very close to this one, we actually see a zombie jumping over a pile of bodies to reach its prey).
And the characters were awful.  One of them seems to change midway through the movie, for no apparent reason.  None of them were likable.
The dialogue was terrible.  The acting might have been worse.
I didn't hate it, but I was pretty bored for most of the movie.
I was having such good luck with movies so far, it was about time I didn't like one.

Rating: 2 stars

Tonight is Pontypool, and I'm not sure where I'm going from there.  I was thinking of watching the original Halloween series...but I'm also thinking about watching the first couple Rob Zombie movies (House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects).  If anyone is actually reading this blog, I'd love to hear any thoughts.

Update/Zombie Diaries Review

We haven't had a meeting for quite some time. As was stated in the first post, we started Zombie Club because every female we knew was involved in a book club. Well, apparently the book club isn't meeting too often these days, so we haven't met for Zombie Club, either. We really need to just watch a zombie movie anyway, regardless if there is a book club that night or not.

In related news, I watched Zombie Diaries by myself the other night. Here is what the cover looks like.

Now I want you to picture in your head what kind of movie this will be.
Your response is probably, "An awesome movie!"
Your response would be wrong.
Nothing on that cover even comes close to happening. Never is there a scene even remotely that cool.
Now, I knew this going into the movie. Scotty had already seen and had warned me that it wasn't very good. So I went into it knowing full well that the cover is completely misleading...and that is how everyone should go into watching this movie.

It actually was not a terrible movie. The concept was that there were three different groups filming their experiences with a hand-held video camera. The footage was shaky, but that was to make it more real. Not a terrible concept. However, there were large portions of the movie that involved lots of running and shooting at night. The camera was showing the ground as they ran...and you really couldn't see any zombies at all. I suppose that's realistic; if you're the guy filming all this stuff, chances are you're not great with guns, so you'd be turning and running. The problem is that you didn't really see too many zombies at all.

A couple of the scenes were pretty unrealistic. One group that we followed consisted of two men (one with a gun, the other with the camera) and a woman. They were heading into town to get food, but they were being cautious, as there figured to be zombies there. The man with the gun mentioned how they didn't have too much ammo, so they had to conserve the bullets that they had. That's cool. I get that. But, when a single zombie comes stumbling towards them, he waits until it's within smashing distance, then shoots it in the head. If there's only one zombie and you're running out of bullets, you don't shoot that thing; you bash its head with whatever is close to you (say, the butt of the rifle that you have in your hand).

The end was pretty bad, too. I can see the message they were trying to convey, but they did it in such a terrible way that it had absolutely no impact. Also, it was a really stupid message.

There was a moment that made me jump. I don't want to ruin it for you, but the first zombie sighting was a bit startling. That was really the high point of the movie.

It's not a terrible movie, just don't go into it thinking that there are going to be massive explosions and an awesome guy walking into zombie town with a shotgun and a 9mm. If you're wanting to watch a movie like this that is actually a good movie, watch Diary of the Dead. It's a much better movie in so many ways.