THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A strange virus of unknown origin rips through a safari park turning all the zoo animals into ravenous undead freaks. It's up to the staff working at the zoo to stop these abominations from escaping and spreading the awful infection throughout the city - an impossible task if the Zoombie contamination reaches the birds of prey exhibit, releasing an onslaught of the squawking dead upon the world of the living.

MY VERDICT:

From the producers of Sharknado - the insanely stupid (yet quite good) movie about man-eating Sharks inside a Tornado - it is clear from the outset that Zoombies is not a movie to be taken seriously. For a start, there is very little believable story; the ‘stop the infection that sprung up from nowhere before it gets out’ is kind of old and boring nowadays. In addition, the ending is extremely anti-climactic seeing the heroes deciding they need to do a thing to ensure the contamination does not get out of the zoo and then doing that thing, no questions asked. Even the animals themselves are only believable when your mind is not engaged. They are CG (Computer Generated) animations which are sometimes realistic, in the case of the capuchin monkeys seen early in the film, but often shockingly bad, the block-like elephants (said to be immune to the virus for unfounded reasons) being a particularly terrible example. One animal, a gorilla named Kifo, actually switches between CG and a man in a gorilla suit - and it's startlingly easy to tell which is which, the two variants not even looking that similar to each other in places. In spite of this, and some over the top acting, Zoombies is a decent movie - not quite reaching the, admittedly low, average bar, but, switch your brain off before watching and you won't be too disappointed.