THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

The military have created a serum that brings the dead back to life. When a terrorist organization attempts to steal the serum for themselves, one of the terrorists is accidentally, and fatally, exposed to the harmful substance. After the body is recovered and cremated, the serum mutates into an airborne virus, rising out of the chimney with the burning man's ashes. With the virus now out of control, exposed to the atmosphere, the small island below is soon engulfed by the living dead the virus creates. Both military and scientists must quarantine the area and contain the threat by any means necessary.

MY VERDICT:

Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 is both a massive departure from the original and a complete disappointment. The first thing you'll notice is the dialogue which is disturbingly awful; often it does not even make sense with what is going on around the characters. As an example, when two of the survivors are driving through a deserted town during the day, the tough army guy answers the question of where everyone is by reporting that all the people have gone out for the night. Really? A completely vacant town with clearly damaged buildings and he assumes everyone has just gone out for a night on the town! Plus, it does not even look to be anywhere near night when the line is spoken. This bad dialogue is accompanied by some equally bad acting - and not just from the living characters. The Zombies (if they can truly be called that) often act in very un-conventional ways such as setting ambushes, waiting for the last second before agilely tackling a living human or, and they do this bizarrely frequently, attempting to strangle their prey instead of doing what Zombies are famed for; biting them. I get that the film is trying to mimic the more chaotic undead of The Return of the Living Dead but the director does not seem to know what he wants from the Zombies; there being no consistency to their behaviour - at one point, a severed Zombie head is able to fly which is about as far from 'typical Zombie behaviour' as you can get. Further to that, there is absolutely no comedy in the movie at all - a major blow after being inspired by one of the most famous Zombie-comedies of all time. And, unfortunately, that is all there is to it. I tried to come up with some positives about this disaster of a movie but, I just cannot think of a single reason to watch this trash-fire; the Zombie make-up is only reasonable, the story is nothing new, there is a strange and uncomfortable blurring effect applied to some of the shots, and so on. Avoid this terrible, terrible film at all costs.