THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

In the aftermath of a Zombie apocalypse, an elite group of soldiers are tasked with infiltrating a quarantine zone filled with the living dead and extracting a top-level scientist; the only man who may have a cure for this unspeakable disease. However, this is no normal outbreak - anyone with combat skills before they 'turned', now have those skills enhanced. As time runs short for London and South East England, a cure must be found before the entire British Isles are overrun.

MY VERDICT:

The trailer for this movie was excellent; hordes of screeching Zombies, armoured military vehicles rolling into and out of London, soldiers moving through deserted streets and intense, fast-paced, close-quarters battles. Unfortunately, though, the film simply does not live up to the high bar it set itself. The most direct criticism I have is the quality of the Zombies, most being 'turned into' Zombies only by applying contact lenses and only liberally splatterings of blood; most looking like simple angry humans and not mutilated, gore-drenched ravenous beasts to be feared. It is sorely apparent that the director stretched the meagre budget way too far - not really surprising given the epic 2-hour runtime of the film - where keeping the movie shorter and tighter may have helped get more production-value in the overall picture. In addition, I call the Zombies "Zombies" as that is how they are referred to in the movie's official description but these are far stranger Zombies than I have ever seen. They are organised with intelligence clearly remaining, enough for a large group of infected soldiers to establish an ordered military camp with human "slaves" (quite what the Zombies are keeping humans alive for is never mentioned). Other oddities come from the "Zombies" snorting lines of cocaine, watching porn, wearing gimp masks or hanging back to allow special kickboxing Zombies to kill a live human with kung-fu before ramming in to feed on the downed body - it's highly bizarre for a long-time Zombie fan and suggests that the movie makers struggled to make their movie original without much thought as to what the end result would be. There are more negatives too; the acting is relatively poor and the story is needlessly convoluted. That being said, taken as a whole, REDCON-1 is not an altogether bad film; there are some intense fight scenes and the whole military chain-of-command theme works quite well (aside from being heavily influenced by 28 Weeks Later). It's almost a shame to say it but you are probably better off watching the trailer than the actual film; all the best bits are there, wrapped up in a much shorter, and more effective, package.