Fatigue of the Dead

Another zombie movie following a handful of scrappy survivors in the countryside? Surely you've never seen anything like THIS before!

Quick Plot: Alice is living her life, fixing breakfast for her young daughter and taking a time out to pee on a pregnancy test stick. Delighted at the results, she phones her husband only to hear his frantic warnings to stay inside and not open the door for anyone...

Which naturally, her toddler has just done, granting access to a crazed 28 Days Later-style zombie. Alice makes it out alive and into the arms of friendly stranger Steven, bidding goodbye to her now eaten firstborn and old life.

Four months go by. Alice and Steven have settled into your typical drive-til-you-have-to-siphon-gas-and-keep-driving routine with a pair of siblings. Somewhere across the countryside, a mysterious woman is being held prisoner for some kind of unexplained medical experiments. Eventually, these stories will sort of kind of meet.

Anger (or Age, its alternate title) of the Dead is an Italian(ish) zombie film written and directed by Francesco Picone, with a terrifying executive producer credit for Uwe Boll. The production values are higher than your average streaming zombie flick, with performances that range from slightly painful to decent. So that's a good thing.

The problem with Age/Anger of the Dead (which, side note: did they choose that title to get a few extra eyes due to its alphabetical placement?) is that it sporadically commits to a deeply cruel streak. Granted, this is a film that opens with an adorable toddler being eaten alive in front of her mother's eyes, so perhaps we have no right to be annoyed at its insanely nasty final shot. 

Still, it would have been nicer had Picone found a little more consistency in tone. Having a mushy moment of love interrupted by a zombie bite tells a darkly funny story. Implying the systematic rape of a female prisoner tells another.

High Points

You can't argue with a zombie movie that doesn't waste time, opening on immediate chaos and moving fairly swiftly from there

Low Points

Seriously: Age/Anger of the Dead deserves better than a 2.9/10 rating on IMDB, but the fact that it ends on such a sour, mean note makes it a little understandable that someone's gut reaction might go that low after finishing the film 

Lessons Learned

Always keep the sharpest object of your home in your toddler’s sock drawer

Enjoying the fresh air on a lovely day is great, but when the undead are roaming the roads, maybe it's worth the splurge of air conditioning instead of keeping your window wide open

When fleeing running zombies, most drivers take their keys before abandoning their cars

New Rule

We all know of the classic Chekhov's Law involving guns and to a lesser extent (but larger in the horror world) bear traps, but it brings me great joy to add a new one to the roster: Chekhov's Law of Naming a Character Alice and how one cannot do such a thing without including at least one "You're not in Wonderland anymore" reference

Rent/Bury/Buy

Anger of the Dead is slightly more watchable than a lot of other low budget zombie films of recent years, but it ends on such a horribly mean beat that I almost wish I hadn't watched it. Some of its action works just fine, but the ultimate mood is so negative that it genuinely destroys any goodwill. 

Reader Recommendation: Alone In the Dark

“Alone in the Dark (2005) five words... "Tara Reid plays an anthropologist." That is all.”--Lis

Why would I NOT watch this movie?

Quick Plot: What feels like a 20 minute voiceover laid out in exciting scrolling text tells us something about the ancient Abkani people’s toying with alternate dimensions and orphan children used for experimentzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzz

Oh. Excuse me. How embarrassing. I don’t normally fall asleep 90 seconds into a movie.

Okay. So. Christian Slater is Ed Canby, a former orphan/paranormal investigator forever confused by a lapse in memory from something bad that happened once. I care about orphans, really, I do. I just can’t pay attention to their plight when I’m bored during their introduction.

Anyway. Canby. Slater. Tank top and used Heathers duster. Back on track this review shall be.

So. Canby is transporting an artifact (looks like a lizard skull but is only ever referred to as “the artifact,” so I’m going with that) to his ex-girlfriend/archaeologist girlfriend Tara Reid. I’m sure her character had a name, but since, for the entire 90 minutes of this film, we only ever think of her as Tara Reid, that’s really all I shall call her.

If you need further proof, allow me to explain:

-Tara Reid wears lipgloss so pink, even Barbie finds it a bit much

-Tara Reid’s mouth hangs open in every scene. Maybe she was congested and just couldn’t breathe through her nose

-Tara Reid naturally wears glasses and a bun when in archaeologist mode, going so far as to wind her hair back into a bun after a roll in the sack when reading from a computer. Blonds can, if you didn’t know, only read when wearing buns. And glasses.

-Tara Reid, playing a “promising archaeologist” (although her boss and mentor only calls her “Miss,” leading us to wonder what the educational credentials of a professional working at an elite museum actually are), mentions a few locations, including, I kid you not, New-found-land.

New. Found. Land. 

Those are the sounds that come out of her glossy pink mouth.

But wait, what was the movie about?

In all honesty, Alone In the Dark isn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting. Keep in mind, the person that just wrote those words has survived the following:

It’s Alive!, starring “grad student” Bijou Philips

Santa Claws

The first 2/3rds of The Twilight Saga

Sunburst, aka Slashed Dreams

Feeders AND Feeders 2: Slay Bells

(in which this was the big special effect)

and a whole lot more that cannot BE contained on a Mill Creek pack

But seriously, it’s not THAT bad. Not Godzilla 2000 or The Happening bad. It is, however, incredibly boring.

Take, for example, the two most action-filled sequences. An early fight between commandos (led by the always needs-a-punch-in-the-face Steven Dorff) and zombified former orphans (I just like that angle) is...okay. I guess. It’s darkly lit and annoyingly scored. But you know...stuff happens. Similarly, a big gunfight with CGI monsters has just about no weight whatsoever. We don’t know a single character that dies. We barely see how they die. They just die. And we don’t care.

Much like the rest of the movie.

High Points

A love scene between Slater and Tara Reid is hilariously scored to cheesy Cinemax style sexy music. That amused me.

Low Points

Gah. I can’t just say Tara Reid, because thought she’s the worst thing onscreen, she’s also the most fun to make fun of

Lessons Learned

Kepler’s first law of fruit stands in film: they will be run over by cars during exciting high speed chases

Commandos entrusted to fix generators are slow-working and incredibly sensitive

If you want to make your characters seem like smart and educated people, be sure to have them say a lot of big words, like “photons,” “luminescent,” and (giggles giggles giggles) New Found Land

Getting electrocuted as a child is a life experience that can occasionally be extremely useful

Screenwriters, take note: never name a character “Marko” if a) he will be called for repeatedly and b) you don’t want your probably drunk/bored audience to retort “Polo!”

Rent/Bury/Buy

Alone In the Dark comes nowhere near being the worst studio film ever made, but that actually makes it much less interesting to recommend. Yes, true bad movie fans owe it to themselves to see Tara Reid look confused in every single one of her scenes, but at the same time, this just isn’t as much bad fun as something worthier of beer, like The Room or Showgirls (which is actually a masterpiece, but nevermind). Anyway, the DVD does have a few featurettes and a Uwe Boll commentary, so--

Oh. Shit.

I mean, Alone In the Dark is a delightful romp into terrifying and dark territory, the likes of which have rarely seen the screen with such pristine intensity. I love everything about it, particularly its directing and producing.