Zombie Fight Club (2014) [Blu-ray]

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While I’d say “Zombie Fight Club” is not the worst zombie movie ever made, it’s definitely up there in the top five. Joe Chien’s zombie, comedy, action… horror movie (?) is so painfully written and poorly directed, it watches like an amateur production from a failed film student. The script watches like it was put together in five minutes with a bunch of concepts that never ever mix together in to a coherent or remotely entertaining movie. Explaining the premise would be like listening to a child with ADD talk as if they’re trying to cram a whole hour’s worth of nonsense in to two minutes. There’s Singapore, and a high rise where a gang of drug abusers are living. The leader of the gang gets a bag of bath salts; said bath salts mysteriously turn the users in to flesh eating zombies.

There’s a mysterious mercenary group that apparently want the money the gang has, so they break in during the beginning of the high rise zombie apocalypse, and find themselves screwed big time. Meanwhile a bunch of apartment residents are introduced and killed off, it’s apparently set during Halloween because the zombies infiltrate a Halloween party ensuing during the middle of the afternoon for some reason. That’s basically how the narrative goes on and on. It just rambles on, introducing characters and sub-plots and nothing ever really happens that sticks and comprises interesting or entertaining zombie entertainment. It’s explained the zombies drink water, but that’s never a relevant plot point. For some reason a character bitten in his stomach grows fangs in his belly that eat people, too. We never see another zombie with that feature, again. There’s no mention of where the bath salts came from, or how they get to Japan, and there’s no real justification why it’s hinted that there’s an apocalypse happening outside of the high rise we visit.

Are the bath salts the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, or did it accidentally add to an already apocalyptic landscape? Truth be told, the writing is so awful, I assumed the mercenaries introduced in the opening were a SWAT team trying to stop the gang members. But suddenly they’re turned in to villains, all of whom want the money from the gang. It’s like so much interesting exposition occurred off screen, so much of the film is spent trying to catch up. Many times plot elements are just thrown out there for no other reason but to fill the time, including a father and his group of daughters taken hostage by the mercenaries in their apartment. During the climax, one of the female character mention something about wanting to have a baby, something that’s never mentioned when we see them, and is only really included for the sake of featuring an “edgy” scene of a new born baby partially eaten by its mother. What nonsensical plot threads and characters aren’t written in, the rest of the movie is filled with really awful special effects and terrible digital animation.

It’s almost mind blowing how ineptly structured the movie is as, when the movie seems to have ended, we shift over to the immediate future where our two surviving characters (Andy On, Jessica C) are now forced to battle the walking dead for two ruthless warlords that bet on their fighters for resources like water, and food. Let me emphasize, there’s no actual zombie fight club until the final half hour of the movie. And there’s only fifteen minutes of gladiators fighting zombies. The rest features a woman being sodomized while she’s eating, and girl on girl sex in a prison, and a finale that clearly indicated the director just didn’t give a crap anymore, and was just featuring whatever scenes he could that he thought were clever, or funny. “Zombie Fight Club” should be the template on how not to create a zombie movie. It should be shown to writing students on how not to structure a narrative and only introducing characters crucial to the overall story. It’s unbelievably awful.

The “Zombie Fight Club” Blu-Ray garners a wonderful clear and finely detailed picture quality that very much will highlight the poor 1997 Playstation quality CGI in the movie. The movie is available in various audio formats including English, and Mandarin, with subtitles available in English and Mandarin only. Featured in the Blu-Ray, there’s “Zombie Fight Club Stunts” a brief roll of footage featuring all of the stunts in the movie, as well as the original theatrical trailer.