The Asylum never met a trend they didn’t hop on to for all the moolah in the world. Since zombies are all the rage and have become something of a culture in the world, The Asylum naturally jumps on the bandwagon to offer up their own view of what the world would look like under the rule of the walking dead. Or “zombies” as the characters call them. This time around director Nick Lyon is at the helm and brings us a movie that is not so much an original film so much as it is a pastiche of better sub-genre offerings.
The opening sequence is a take off of “28 Days Later,” the stock footage is reminiscent of the “Dawn” remake, much of the tropes doled out take from the original “Dawn,” “Army of Darkness,” “The Road,” “Resident Evil,” and there are numerous nods to “The Walking Dead.” The character Ving Rhames plays mourns the loss of a horse he owned that was eaten in the city (even though there’s no indication the dead eat animals, as we’re told the infection can affect the animal population too), and one character even discusses the fate of a survivor named Kirkman who was eaten by a horde of zombies. This is all forgivable if “Zombie Apocalypse” had something compelling and interesting to offer the sub-genre, but sadly it doesn’t. The movie is very watchable, and by default one of Asylum’s best films to date, but the primary problem of this zombie romp is that it is so painfully dull and tedious it’s impossible to sit through without dozing off every now and then. The problem with “Zombie Apocalypse” and its tedium is that there simply is no conflict among characters.
People simply wander around deserted locales doing nothing, and offering nothing and confront the walking dead every so often. Plots are undeveloped and characters are half-assed as people appear and disappear in a moment’s notice, allowing no emotional attachments. The back stories are slim and rare with only small bits of exposition occasionally peppered in to moments of silence, while we watch the characters basically walk around the city looking in to stores, wandering in to neighborhoods, and… that’s pretty much it. We’re given a glimpse at possible conflict when they begin to discover corpses impaled with arrows; this is where we’re introduced to the elusive archers who also don’t supply much conflict either. There are hints throughout the story that the archer survivors could pose a threat to our small band of wanderers, but we later discover them to be docile and just as aimless as everyone else. When we meet the archers in the second half they finally hand the audience a plot.
They’re trying to make it to a dock port where a ship will take them to Catalina Island to a safe haven for survivors. Possibly. Before they’re introduced the writers literally try to find a direction for this story, putting our characters in to harrowing situations and doing little to inspire us to care about them. There is simply nowhere to go with anyone here. Taryn Manning looks bored and plays supporting role to the rest of the cast, while Ving Rhames (in his third outing fighting the walking dead) has the most personality wielding a sledge hammer and dabbling in affection for his sword wielding partner, Cassie. The rest of the cast are interchangeable and forgettable at best. Even the archers don’t present much dazzling displays of skill, which is shame because this is where the film should truly shine. In the end the writers don’t even know how to approach the big meet at the dock, so they hand us a tacked on fight with a poorly animated zombie tiger, and do little to answer our questions about the boat, Catalina, or the fate of our survivors. If I cared about any of them, I’d be mighty sore about the unresolved plot threads never patched up. It’s an admittedly competent and well made zombie installment that does what it can on the small budget and poor special effects, but with the pointless screenplay, lack of narrative, one dimensional characters, and absolutely dull pacing, “Zombie Apocalypse” is yet another film from the Asylum that has potential but never reaches it.