Skip navigation

Category Archives: Other Zombie Stuff

Rammbock – Watch it now

Sitting home alone tonight and while scrolling through the horror section of watch it now, I found this movie I never heard of called Rammbock. I debated for minute if I should watch that or maybe watch Big Trouble in Little China again, but I am glad I chose Rammbock.

I would have to say with the hundreds of crappy zombie movies out there this movie is pretty good. It’s only an hour long so I don’t really know if it’s a show or movie or what. It’s in German with subtitles.

The story takes place in an apartment building in Berlin after a 28 Days Later style outbreak. A kind of pathetically lovesick guy and a young plumber are trapped in the lovesick guy’s ex-girlfriend’s apartment. The action is tight, there are some realy brutal parts and overall it’s a really fun movie.

The thing that was kind of great about this movie is the lead is kind of pathetic. I mean he is losing his hair young, he has a belly, he is kind of a wimp. He is chasing after this girlfriend who appears to have moved on. He is pretty much the guy who would be the first to die in a more mainstream movie. It’s kind of refreshing to see actually.

It’s on watch it now , on netflix so check it out.

REC2 and Pontypool – both pretty decent

Watched a couple living dead style flicks the past couple weeks that were actually pretty good.  I watched REC2 which is the sequel to REC.  Both are Spanish movies and all the dialogue is in Spanish so if you have problems reading subtitles they are not for you.

REC was also remade in English starring the woman who played Dexter’s sister.  The English version is called Quarantine, which was also a decent horror flick. To sum it up there is, in an apartment building,  some sort of outbreak which makes people become deranged killers.  The building is sealed up by whomever the CDC is in Spain and the entire movie takes place inside the building.

Long story short there is a bunch of bloody violence and other stuff.  REC is filmed in shaking camera style and most of the movie takes place through the lens of a news camera which is trapped inside the building.  REC was a pretty good flick.  Not a lot of huge plot holes or “WTF are they doing” moments.  The origin of the infection is linked to some religious wack job in the attic.  Nothing is really explained but it’s kind of better that way.  It just seems ominously related to religion, possibly human experiments.

Well REC2 picks up right where REC left off and is shot mainly through the helmet cams of various SWAT team people who enter the building.  They find more about the origin of the outbreak and the movie takes more of a super natural twist.  I didn’t really like that but the movie is still well done and much better then the average horror flicks out there.

The second movie I watched is Pontypool, it does not involve  zombies but sort of a mass insanity.  It is a very psychological thriller, almost all action takes place off screen, while the main characters hide in a radio studio.  It’s the kind of move were you will most likely either love or hate.  The acting is really good, which is essential with such a tight psychological thriller where the fright comes from the actors, not the action.  This could have easily been the worst movie of the year with bad acting…it’s an actors’ movie for sure.

In Ponypool, the zombie-like madness and mass insanity spreads in a very unusual and complex way, so this is kind of like a mass hysteria movie for cerebral types.

Mutants – Review, kind of sucks

Late last night my girlfriend and I were wandering around the netflix watch it now universe and I stumbled onto a French zombie flick called Mutants. I had never heard of it but with a general lack of interesting things to watch we decided to go for it.

The first 15 minutes of the movie seem pretty awesome.  It was taut, violent and scary.  The acting seemed good, the production values, the special effects,  even the background of the French mountainside looked great.

After that the movie started going downhill, and downhill fast.  First it started to seem like  a play and kind of boring, this couple is hiding in large building, the man is infected and the woman is a doctor trying to treat him.  This goes on for a pretty long time with not much happening except the guy getting sicker.

Later in the movie there are some other people introduced and they are terrible, ridiculous characters.  It seems like in every zombie/post apocalyptic flick there has to be some sort of bad guy.  Of course in this one the bad guy seems to act bad for no apparent reason or self benefit.  I can totally see people doing terrible things to fight over food or whatever they need to survive but why would someone immediately make enemies out of everyone they meet if it doesn’t benefit them?

If you compare the plot and characters of this movie with books like Tooth and Nail the difference in believability and quality is so vastly different, there’s no question the books are better.

Then there are some really groan inducing parts where the people do extremely stupid and self destructive things.  All in the this movie is pretty weak, although not in the category of worst zombie movies out there.

Tooth and Nail, Craig Dilouie pretty good too

Tooth and Nail is another zombie novel which is very much worth reading.  Kind of similar to the Day by Day series this book involves the military.

In this book the the “zombies” are infected people similar to the zombie movie 28 days later.  This book has great action scenes with a battalion of armed infantry fighting against thousands of infected across Manhattan. The military aspects of the book seem really well researched and very believable. The only weakness with the book is the depth of characters.  Most of the military people kind of all blended together to me.    It was hard to know,  like or care about any of the characters really. This book is definitively as dark and gritty as the Day by Day series but without having someone to really cheer for it kind of falls flat.

JL Bourne Best Zombie Stuff out there

I recently read Day by Day Armageddon : Beyond Exile and I think that this is perhaps the best zombie literature out there.  I have read several more zombie books recently and I think the Day by Day series is by far the best.  The character development is the best,  it’s the most realistic, dark and perhaps the best researched set of books out there.  Instead of having surviving military people just become mindless raiders, the book is actually about people who try to live and defeat the living dead around them, often using cutting edge military equipment.  Stuff like satellites, predator drones, aircraft carriers, laser guided bombs and so on.

The author is an officer in the military and the amount of detail and research he uses about military equipment and tactics really makes the book way more interesting.   The characters seem pretty real since they are not cartoonish or one dimensional.

There is a bit of conflict with other living people but it lacks any Romero-style message or social commentary. Most people seem to be into joining or being part of what is left of the military and banding together for protection rather than fighting each other road warrior style like in most post apocalyptic novels.  The series is a great read and I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Best Zombie Novels

Well it’s supposed to be a year before there is another Walking Dead episode. I have been occasionally doing searches on netflix for living dead related movies I have not seen, and frankly there isn’t much. Most of the stuff I haven’t seen has sucked pretty hard and not really worth watching in my opinion.  What I have found are some great zombie books.  I also have found some not so great zombie books but I’ll skip them. These two books are in the same vein as the Walking Dead, there is no magic of religious stuff, just a plague of living dead people. These book are available on audio book, which is great. Morning commutes and household chores just fly by while listening to these stories.

The first book is called Day by Day Armageddon, and it’s by J.L. Bourne. It is in journal form written by a naval officer as the world gets taken over by zombies. The book goes on chronicle his by by day survival and the people he meets along the way. What was kind of interesting about this book is the main character is smart and extremely capable, so there isn’t a whole lot of scenes that leave you scratching your head wondering why he is doing something stupid.  There is no explanation as to why the zombies exist, similar to the Walking Dead. In fact, the world where this novel exists is pretty much the same world in which the show Walking Dead exists, except this novel takes places as civilization is falling, not after.

The second book is Called Plague of the Dead: The Morning Star Strain by Z.A. Reicht. In this book the zombies are caused by a virus that spreads by bite. Infected people go crazy biting others until they die.  After they die, and this is kind of a spoiler, the virus reanimates the body and continues its biting spree.  This book is told from the  perspective of several people from various parts of the world, and although I have not finished the book yet, seems to primarily take place as humanity is combating the infected/zombies, rather then just surviving.  Something that is better in the book than in any movie I have seen yet, is the sheer scope of what is happening.  In this book there are actual battles between the military and entire cities of the undead.  I’ve never seen anything like that in the movies. It  would be great to see this book made into a movie with Lord of Rings level cgi battles, but I doubt that will happen.

Zombie Dairies

I was scanning around in netflix and was recommended Zombie Dairies based on past interests or whatever.  I looked at the reviews

“sorry i didnt read the reviews, but it is true, it is the worst zombie move i’ve seen so far. dont judge the movie by its cover. move on, next movie please…..”

Sounds great , the worst zombie movie? How could I not watch that? I got the flick and was actually pleasantly surprised.  It turned out to be a pretty good movie. Yeah it’s very low budget and shot hand camera style like The Blair Witch but I thought it was great. The special effects are a joke, and zombies look very foolish but still I watched the movie to the end wanting to know what was going to happen. My girlfriend even watched it to the end, which is rare for something obviously low budget. Although the zombies were laughable, the rest of the movie contained all the post apocalyptical stuff I like: break down of society, scavenging to survive, people turning on each other, and even a couple psychos enjoying the new lawlessness.  I would recommend watching this movie it’s better then last three Romero movies.

Need a Zombie fix Check out Dead Set

Another 7 days or so before the premiere of the Walking Dead. I was wandering around on the internet looking for stuff to add content to this site and I stumbled on a mini-series called Dead-Set. I was actually very surprised I had never heard of it.

It is a mini-series from the UK about people who are in the middle of filming a reality television show when there is a Zombie outbreak, and pretty much everyone outside of the house they are filming in dies. I would say that this mini-series is awesome (If you like zombie stuff). The acting is decent, there are not huge plot holes, no superman heroics, and the Zombies are pretty nasty.  It is actually very realistic and good, realistic of course outside of the zombie outbreak but it’s inferred that you suspend disbelief in that. Don’t get me wrong watching Milla Jovovich Karate kick zombies is entertaining in all, but what I really like is the survival stories of regular people figuring ways to deal with the worst situations.

I have watched half of it so far and unless the the ending suddenly gets very stupid I would have to recommend it to any fans of the genre. I haven’t actually seen any zombie movie this good in a very long time.

Zombiethon?

Last night I was home cruising around in the watch it now universe of netflix and I stumbled across a movie called Zombiethon. I read the description and couldn’t quite understand what this move was about. Something about old zombie movies and scantily clad women.  That sounded good so I started watching it. I was kind of expecting some sort of documentary style maybe with a host showing clips of old movies and making fun on them. That’s not what it is, I am still not sure what it is …. what is Zombiethon?

Apparently someone decided to take a bunch of old Zombie movies and cut out the heaviest action scenes along with the scenes with most gratuitous and generally unnecessary nudity and paste them together into kind of a Best Of… video? Its got some classic stuff like the naked girl scuba diving who gets attacked by a zombie and a big tiger shark saves her. That’s not a joke it’s a real scene from the movie called Zombie. There is other great stuff like 8 girls going skinny dipping and being attacked by nazi zombies underwater. There appears to be scenes that were created for the movie from scratch, all of which appear to consist mostly of an attractive woman running from a guy dressed in a cheesy costume.

There doesn’t appear to be any real dialogue or anything created for the movie but there is a scene of zombies watching a movie in a movie theater. The things I would never get to see if I didn’t have netflix’s watch instantly option.

Best Zombie Movies?

Well while I am waiting for the Walking Dead television show to start, I will fill this site with some content related to the subject matter. In a transparent attempt to get reader interaction I ask what are the best Zombie movies. This has been probably posted on numerous horror websites at this point but screw it, I am going to write my own list.

I don’t really have an order or best one, but I will say which ones don’t suck in my opinion and let’s be honest almost all of them suck.

Night of the Living Dead - Both the original and the remake. Pretty much everyone has seen the original at this point, you can watch it online for free by clicking here . Now there is a remake of this movie which I thought was actually pretty good. Not many people have seen that though… more info on it here. Not really sure why it wasn’t popular at all.  It’s basically the original in color with better effects and Barbra(of the famous “They’re coming to get you Barbra”) doesn’t lose her mind and become catatonic.  She actually kind of starts kicking ass, in this version.  I would say if you liked the first Night of the Living Dead then most likely you will like the remake. You can actually watch the movie on youtube right now by clicking here.  I would also guess if you like the Walking Dead comic/graphic novels you would like these movies also.

Dawn of the Dead -  Both the original and the remake. The original has some truly hilarious special effects and makeup, also if you look closely I’m pretty sure you see tracy ullman dressed up as a zombie.   It might not be her but it could pass as her twin.  The first is a classic, the social commentary of mindless zombies walking around a shopping mall like they are shopping, Tom Savani dressed up as a Biker, it’s all in there. The remake was more of an action movie, but I found it really fun also.  You have Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley fighting through hordes of zombies, what is not to like? Decent special effects, no extremely large plot holes and no total ridiculous behavior, all in all a decent flick.

Then there are the zombie comedies which seem to have become a pretty popular genre lately. I only really like two of these and one is actually pretty old:

Shaun of the Dead – I thought this was a really fun movie, but it helps if you have actually seem some other zombie movies to get all the jokes.

Return of the Living Dead – This is actually the first in a series of a type of spoof/horror movies. It’s definitely a comedy but at the same time can be very gory and I guess kind of scary.  This movie has zombies which don’t die no matter what you do to them. It also has a bunch of punk rockers fighting the zombies and a naked  punk rock girl dancing around in the graveyard, how can you not want to watch that? The rest of this movie series gets goofier and worse and not really worth seeing unless you are really into this sort of thing. You can watch the whole movie on youtube here.

Lastly there are the movies which have things similar to zombies:

28 Days later – The monsters in this aren’t actually zombies but rather sick humans, but close enough.  It has soldiers mowing down the infected and all the post apocalyptic stuff that I like in movies.  I recommended this to a non-horror fan once and they said it sucked because for one the infection couldn’t ever take over a body that quick and two the soldiers in the end acted way too sex starved for only being without woman for 28 days. I agree with both those assessments but lighten up it’s a movie.   Suspending disbelief for those things is kind of minor compared to the crap in the average action/horror movie, isn’t it?

Rec – This is another infected person as zombie movie, but with some religious undertones. There is a US version of this movie called Quarantine which stars Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter’s sister) which is ok too but I think the original is better.

I guess that is it, I would say these are probably what I would consider the best in this genre.

Sarah Polley