Resident Evil The Light has Jade attempting a dangerous escape through the Chunnel. She is leading a small group of survivors in an attempt to escape Umbrella’s wrath.
Resident Evil
The story telling continues to jump back and forth between the current timeline and the backstory. They should have just concentrated on the current timeline with Jade running from Richard Baxter, played by Turlough Convery. Yes, I kind of recognized him but couldn’t place it until I looked at his IMDB page and realized I knew him from Killing Eve.
With Baxter hot on her heels, Jade is forced to make a risky escape through the Chunnel, only to have Baxter follow her there anyway. Of course Umbrella isn’t the only dangerous thing in the Chunnel and there are some nice action scenes as everyone ends up fighting for their survival.
I Hate Spiders
Compared to The Devil You Know, The Light picked up and felt much faster paced. There are multiple combat scenes and a few good moments of suspense. I still don’t like jumping back and forth between timelines. It seems overused and I think I’d actually like the episode more if I could just watch the “current timeline” version. Yes, I love Lance Reddick as Albert Wesker. Actually, I love almost every role he’s ever had. From The Wire to John Wick, how can you not appreciate the subtle intensity that Lance brings to every role he plays?
But…I just want to see the story progression when Jade is surviving in the Zombie infested wastelands. I would even be happy if they just limited the flashbacks to a very short clip explaining why something is the way it is. I don’t need a whole other storyline to explain the past.
Scoring Resident Evil The Light
Okay, rant over. I’m giving The Light a 77/100 as I felt like it was back on track after a slower Episode 2. There was more and better action and I happily watched it twice to make sure I didn’t miss any small details.
Rise of The Zombies has an all star cast that includes Danny Trejo, Levar Burton, and Mariel Hemingway, so I had high hopes that I had found a gem.
Rise Of The Zombies
Then I watched the first ten minutes and realized this was a low budget movie. That doesn’t mean bad, and the director did a great job with what money they did have.
The story is fairly straight forward. San Francisco has been overrun, and the survivors flee to Alcatraz. The lead scientists, played by Levar Burton, is searching for a cure. Boy is it weird to see Levar shoot a shotgun. It just feels wrong! Anyway, once Alcatraz is overrun the majority of the survivors flee back to the mainland while Levar stays behind to continue his work.
One of the highlights of the movie is the caesarian birth scene followed by some baby Zombie stomping. I wish I hadn’t been laughing, but that is what happens sometimes.
Rise of the Zombies Scoring
Overall I’m giving Rise of The Zombies a 48/100, making it a solid Rainy Day Movie, which was perfect, because it rained while I was watching it.
What cost Rise of The Zombies points? Sadly, it does feel dated, but the majority of the points get taken off due to the overuse of the “Zombie the team missed” trope, as well as inconsistent rules. How can Zombies climb the Golden Gate Bridge but not a fence? Then there is the overly detailed scientific explanations. It’s a Zombie Movie, we don’t need to go too deep guys.
Quarantine 2 starts slow, telling the story of two airline stewardesses as they start their day, eventually leading to the start of the movie. Someone brought the virus onboard, and its not long before the plane is making an emergency medical landing.
Quarantine 2
From there, it is a fairly standard Zombie Infection story. The small group of survivors slowly gets taken down, and of course we have the emotional, bit, not leaving you storyline – which is just dumb at this point. If I see a bunch of my group get eaten alive after bites spread the infection, I’m not going to hesitate to leave you behind if you are essentially a stranger to me.
Quarantine 2 Scoring
Quarantine 2 scores a 64/100, putting it at the higher end of the Rainy Day Movie zone. The slow start, repetitive bad decisions, and the very formulaic ending cost this movie. There is nothing new here, but there are some good action scenes, even if there are no hoards. At max you see maybe four or five Zombies at any one time. That can work, but it has to be a good movie. Throw a few good hoards in and you get a few bonus points in my book.
Compared to the original Quarantine this fell by 3 points.
Lethal Virus opens with one of our main characters forced to head outside when his supplies runout. The streets are empty, at least until he heads into a mall. At this point it’s not clear he understands how bad the situation is. If he wasn’t before he got to the mall, he quickly figured it out. It doesn’t take long for him to come face to face with a horde of Zombies in the mall hallways. As he runs for his life we cut over to the other main character. The other main character is a female scientist being escorted to safety by her military convoy. At least until it is overrun by the undead.
Lethal Virus
With her convoy overrun, our scientist flees into the woods. As luck would have it she meets up with our other main character.
Up until this point the movie was low budget but high action, and was doing fairly well. Once our two main characters team up there is a bit more dialogue, and then the movie follows a very predictable course.
There is a lot of bad dialogue that felt like it got copied from a bad video game. There is a twist at the end, but I have to be honest, it didn’t make sense to me. If the scientist wasn’t a high value staff member why did she have a military convoy and so on?
Lethal Virus Scoring
In the end the special effects were C+, the dialogue was a C-. They get an A+ for the number of zombies and hordes. They did that really well, but overall the movie had just a few too many gaps for me. I’m giving it 46/100, put it squarely in Rainy Day Movie territory.
Can a movie be so bad it’s good? If its possible, that is what Zombie Strippers! may have achieved. The concept is simple. The government is trying to make super soldiers, and unleash the undead on the world. For some strange reason the females maintain more brains than the males who turn, and of course the outbreak centers around a strip club.
Zombie Strippers!
The dialogue is horrible.
Some really bad dialogue!
On top of the dialogue being bad, the men in the strip club don’t seem to have any reaction to the Zombies, they seem willing to accept pretty much anything as long as there are boobs involved. Come on, some of us are better than that. Right?
Zombie Strippers! Scoring
This is not a typical Zombie Movie and tries to hard to be funny and crude, and yet, I did watch the whole thing. I’m giving le, that is what Zombie Strippers! a 49/100, making it a Rainy Day Movie. It is not good, but it is so bad you can’t turn away.
If you are looking for something fun and violet I’d suggest Zombieland. It scores a perfect 100/100 is is everything a comedy/action Zombie Film should be.
Zombie was originally released in 1979, and it is amazing how well this movie holds up.
A boat shows up in New York harbor, drifting into the main waterway. The coast guard goes to investigate. This kicks off the story of how the boat’s owner’s daughter begins a mission to find out what happened to her father.
The investigation leads our heroine to the islands around St. Thomas. On the way there we get to see some nice ta ta’s, which is quickly followed by an infected attacking a shark. Quality stuff.
Zombie Shark!
When you consider this is over forty years old you really have to give them credit for the quality special effects as well as the action scenes. There is also a nice little twist at the end. I loved how the cars are still moving in the background though. Comment if you see what I mean.
Zombie Scoring
Overall I’m giving Zombie a solid 80/100. It is Worth Your Time and stands up well to two plus decades of aging.
Republic Z was originally released in 2018. It is a Russian film, and I believe the native language was originally Yakut. At least based my google map skills. I looked up the region and it appears to be in the far north of the country.
Republic Z
The movie has English Subtitles. If you are a native Russian speaker please let me know how well they did with the subtitles. There are times when I think something got lost in the translation, but I’m not sure. Maybe there are phrases that just don’t translate well. No worries though, this is a Popcorn Movie. It is sometimes silly, but I found it to be an enjoyable movie nonetheless.
The CGI and special effects vary from good to okay, but I actually liked the characters, even if I lost some of the depth due to the translations. I won’t ruin the ending, but I did enjoy it, and I hope there is a sequel in the making, because I would definitely watch it.
Have a drink, yell at them when they do something stupid, and enjoy something just a little bit different.
Republic Z Scoring
Republic Z just missed being Worth Your Time by a few points with a 68/100. That makes it a Rainy Day Movie, but just barely.
Overall, the total packaged scored a 66/100, which is the average of the nine shorts below. Let me know if you agree with my scores in the comments. This makes Zombie Feast just one point into Worth Your Time territory.
The main character is at the mall, clearly interested in one of his female coworkers when all hell breaks out. The mall is overrun by the undead, and only a small band of survivors are left. They quickly form a plan to try and get to the parking lot and escape, but the Zombies are everywhere.
The filmography is really good, and while the native language is Spanish the text seems well translated and makes sense. (I’ve had some subtitles that were clearly done by a PC. That means they didn’t make any sense with what was going on.)
Zombies and Cigarettes Scoring
As the initial short it was strongly done. At least up till about 7/10ths of the way through when we find out that the Zombies destroyed by perfume? How? We don’t ever get any info on that, which makes the ending seem a little abrupt. I know its a short, but still.
We then get to the other side of this short there is a small twist. This is really a love story about how the main character strikes out. Right up to the end of the short…ouch. Overall I’m giving Zombies and Cigarettes a 66/100.
Bitten
This short begins at 15:20 and and at 21:00 .
Bitten opens with a woman desperately locking herself inside her apartment. Blood splatter is visible on her shirt as she struggles to lock the door. When she turns around we see she’s been bitten, and has a nasty wound on her neck.
Really Painful Hickey?
Inside we see that the apartment is safe. There is evidence of violence on the walls, the mirror, and smeared across the cabinets.
As our victim slowly turns we get flashbacks of what happened. The special effects were really well done. I can see the emotional impact the short is trying for, but for me, it didn’t satisfy that Zombie craving. There was gore, and there was a little bit of violence, but who wants to see mum stab her (presumably infected) family to death?
Dead Hungry opens with a late middle aged Zombie in coveralls wandering through the woods. The Zombie sadly groans, “Brains,” every so often. Farmer Zombie is of the classic slow variety. Even after he finds two campers trying to get it on, he can’t score a bite.
The next scene has kids retreating to a cabin. The cabin is surrounded by the Undead, and our Farmer Zombie end up losing an arm. There is also a bit of Zombie Love going on? Farmer Zombie seems to recognize one of the lady Zombies?
Zombie Love
In the end, our Farmer Zombie did get a snack, but he didn’t get to keep his love? Unless eating her brains counts?
Dead Hungry was short and overall a little silly. But it is worth watching on a Rainy Day as it scored a 60/100.
The Skin of Your Teeth
This short begins at 30:55 and ends at 44:30.
The Skin of Your Teeth opens with a man putting a few more nails in his boarded up windows. Outside a woman waters their garden. As night falls they take shelter in their little country home while listening to the radio. The broadcast warns them to stay inside.
The morning begins with two men waking in the woods. They look nervous and anxious as they walk their bikes along the woods. At least until they get to the farm house. The group knows each other and the campers are greeted with hugs and smiles.
The next day we see our first Zombie. The group quickly takes it out before dragging the body to the pile. Apparently our farmers have been taking care of business.
Body Pile
Why did they cover the pile with a tarp? Why not make a burn pit or just dump them? While two of the men are distracted with the bodies, another Zombie almost gets to the woman as she’s farming.
Someplace Safer?
The farming couple wants to find someplace safer. The two who came from the city seem to think the farm is a good place to stay. They have food, and lots of open ground to see the Zombies coming.
The group is woken in the morning by a Zombie banging at their boarded up window. This Zombie is quickly shot, and drug to the pile. As they are are placing the latest Zombie on the pile we see a horde come over the hill. This was an awesome scene:
The Horde Cometh
Sadly, one of the campers doesn’t make it back as the group flees to the farmhouse which is quickly overrun. The surviving men get quickly pulled down and the woman is forced to flee. She makes it to a grain silo where she is trapped, holding off the horde with a piece of plywood.
There was so much potential with this short. Even if the Zombie effects were really basic, the scene where they come over the hill was just epic. The ending on the other hand was a bit weak in my opinion. Which cost The Skin of Your Teeth some points.
The Skin of Your Teeth just squeaked by into Worth Your Time territory with a score of 70/100.
There is not a lot going on for XXX. The audio quality is pretty bad, and for a Zombie short, the action takes forever to get started.
The dialogue is C+ at best. The whole short should have started when the main character, Dan got back from his food run. Everything before that is basically just filler.
There is a good bit of gore though, so I’m giving the gore a B+. But the special effects are a solid C.
Drill Press Kill
I did like the ending, but the overall production values are a bit lacking, so Arise is getting a 63/100.
Zomblies
This short begins at 1:03:30 and ends at 1:47:50.
Zomblies begins with a man an camo running through the forest. He is shooting Zombies as he comes across them while screaming for Porosa. Porosa is nowhere to be found, but he does find one of his buddies who’s been gutted. He briefly tries to help, but runs when its clear the wounded man isn’t going to make it. The wounded man turns quickly and appears to hunt down his buddy. We then cut over to a woman calling for help on a radio. A group of government and military leaders listen to her from around a boardroom table. Whatever is going on, no one at the table seems surprised.
When we cut back to the wilderness. There is a small caption telling us we are 15 miles west of “The Wall” before seeing a squad of soldiers come up out of the water in classic action movie style.
Water Entrance
The soldiers quickly encounter a swarm of fast moving Zombies and run for the high ground. The soldiers enjoy some target practice as they search for the signal of the last team who’d been sent in.
For a group of elite soldiers, they seem undisciplined. Their most critical piece of gear, their radio, rapidly breaks, forcing the group to go find the radio from the first team who they’ve lost contact with.
The team is quickly overrun as they move north, but it does lead to some nice Zombie Violence.
Zombie Kills
Run & Gun
There are lots of Zombies in the woods, and the team is forced to run and gun as they flee. They don’t seem overly burdened with gear, at least not visibly. They are apparently carrying a ton of ammo, because they are blowing through it really quick.
We then see a montage of soldiers running across fields. The control center tracks them via satellite before the rangers find themselves in what looks like an abandoned industrial complex. For some reason they take a sample from a Zombie. This is done with no gloves, and no face shield. Which of course means the Zombie the soldier is collecting a sample from coughs blood into his face and eyes.
We then get to meet Porosa, who rapidly gets bit, and hides it from the team. We get introduced to one more survivor before the soldier who caught the blood spit in his eyes blows his head off, apparently realizing he’s been infected.
The group is then overrun and forced to flee but the control center wants them to bring back samples – which happen to be with the soldier who blew his head off.
There is a lot of Zombie action, hordes of undead, a bombing run by jets, a motorcycle escape with lots of explosions, and then the team reaches The Wall, were the auto turrets are quickly turned on them. Luckily for the sole survivor, the guns can’t point down right at the base of the wall.
Wall Turrets
Zomblies Scoring
Zomblies is by far the longest episode so far, and it clearly had a much larger budget than the other shorts so far. There are good special effects, tons of Zombies and fighting, but, it only scored a 71/100.
Why? The plot is pretty bad, the dialogue is horrible, and people yell and scream for no reason that makes any sense. With a better story, better dialogue, and some slightly better directed actors, this could have been an awesome short, instead of being at the lower end of the Worth Your Time scale.
Fear of the Living Dead
This short begins at 1:50:30 and ends at 2:06:00.
Fear of the Living Dead opens with a young woman walking down the street, an axe in hand. The infection is two weeks old. She enters a home, her ax at the ready as she searches the home. In the back she finds a Zombie having some dinner, and does a little bit of Zombie whacking.
Time To Swing That Ax
With the house cleared she raids the cupboards for some supplies before heading out into the woods where she encounters a few more hungry undead which she quickly dispatches.
After finding a cabin to sleep in our heroine gets disturbed midway through the night be a female Zombie which she destroys quickly. Apparently she’s not so good about clearing spaces she’s going to be sleeping in?
Bitten!
The next day she finds another survivor who is alarmed by the bitemarks on her arm. She has been bitten, multiple times, but she thinks she is immune.
She wants to keep moving, but the male survivor wants to stay put. In the end the pull of company makes him follow her back out into the Zombie infested streets.
After entering a random home to find supplies, the male survivor uses his pistol to kill a Zombie inside the house, which brings all the local Zombies in to investigate.
Surrounded
Thanks to some luck and a few pistol shots the pair escapes, but not before our female survivor gets a few fingers bitten off. They find a vehicle and flee to a safe place.
This is when things take a turn. There is a nice little twist. It’s not overall original, but it was a surprise, which earned Fear of the Living Dead a 75/100. There isn’t much dialogue, and there is a “College Project” feel to Fear of the Living Dead, but it is Worth Your Time.
The final short opens with a man slowly going into his shed to fed his now Zombie girl. Jackie has clearly seen better days.
Jackie
After making his wife angry because he only has one cow brain, Jackie gets pissed. She clearly doesn’t remember her husband, and him yelling at her about their daughter doesn’t seem to do much.
Angered, Jackie escapes just as her husband trips, which results in him getting bitten. As she’s tearing into dinner, who comes to the stop of the steps but the daughter, and thus this very short short, ends.
Not Even Death has some good subtle backstory that was put in as the husband is talking about getting brains for Jackie, but the overall content isn’t anything new, which is why Not Even Death scored a 60/100.
This French short begins with a couple getting married, which includes a promise to send the other to heaven if they turn into one of the undead before jumping right into the action.
Zombie Killing Action
There is fairly nonstop, over the top Zombie killing action which culminates in the wife having to uphold her vows after her husband gets bitten. She uses a rocket on him and somehow gets bitten when his head lands on her leg.
The short ends with the two of them kidding, surrounded by other Zombies.
As silly as it was, I’m giving this episode an 80/100 as it jumped right into the action and didn’t let up.
Night of the Comet is the movie that made me fall in love with the zombie genre. It has a great story revolving around two gorgeous sisters who are luckily inside when the Comet turns everyone who was exposed into the undead.
Night of the Comet
The two sisters, Regina Belmont played by Catherine Mary Stewart and Samantha Belmont played by Kelli Maroney have advantages. Their father was in the army and the girls know how to handle some military grade weapons. Those types of skills come in handy when the Zombies start to bite.
The sisters meet up with Hector Gomez played by Robert Beltran before deciding to send out a broadcast to other survivors from a nearby radio station.
As luck would have it, the people who come looking for them have ulterior motives. They need the blood of survivors to try and save themselves.
Night of the Comet Scoring
The movie is over twenty years old, and yet it has held up really well. The first twenty times I’ve watched this movie it scored a 100/100. Close to forty years later and it still holds up, earning an 85/100.
If you haven’t watched Night of the Comet, you have to put it on your short list now.
