Director John Gulager is not above making entertaining horror films, as we saw with “Feast,” but his offering for the current zombie movie craze ends up being surprisingly conventional and dull. It doesn’t really offer anything new or unique in terms of the zombie movie realm, and to make things worse there are just too many sub-plots. We literally follow almost a dozen characters and their efforts to make it through the beginning of a zombie apocalypse, and beyond their efforts to stay alive, there’s not a lot to them or their personalities.
After a mysterious outbreak of the walking dead, dad Patrick and his daughter find themselves stranded in a graveyard as zombies begin rising from their graves. The zombies are of course flesh eaters, and are rising everywhere. From cemeteries, and hospitals, to morgues, they’re on a rampage. As Patrick and his daughter are stuck in a shed trying to find their way out, their neighbors deal with a psychotic nanny who is convinced the outbreak is judgment day. Daryl Hannah also plays Birdie, a young woman stuck caring for her invalid mom, who has to fend off the dead with her wounded friend, and figure out a way out of her house. The movie jumps from sub-plot to sub-plot, never quite focusing on an actual main character.
We even jump to the neighbors who plan to run in to a panic room to wait out the dead, and as we’ve seen a thousand times, their arguing and bickering make it impossible for them to work together. Not a lot of the film makes sense, and most of the character actions are absolutely frustrating. I don’t understand why the characters just didn’t hide in their neighbors’ panic room, rather than running out of the house. There’s also an indication by news stations that the zombies recede back in to their graves at sunrise for some reason. Why does sunrise cause them to halt their carnage? Who knows? It just gives our characters a chance to survive, and tries in vain to amp up the tension.
The character numbers dwindle and they try their hardest to outwit the walking dead, while waiting for the sun to come up. I don’t care that the writers never give us a reason why the zombies began rising, but that’s as far as they go with explaining their monsters. At one point character Birdie is bitten and it’s hinted she may change, but she just never does. Plus, rather than looking for ways out, characters simply walk to the doors as the dead break in, and scream like idiots. “Zombie Night” isn’t terrible, it’s just another humdrum zombie entry that has no real narrative. It’s just a series of zombie rampage sequences, and nothing else. The zombie make up is really quite good for what the film entails, but “Zombie Night” is utterly unremarkable.