Zombie Resurrection (UK Blu-ray / DVD)
Gareth Jones
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Starring Eric Colvin, Jim Sweeney, Danny Brown, Simon Burbage, Jade Gatrell, Joe Rainbow
Directed by Jake Hawkins and Andy Phelps
Distributed by Left Films
So…Zombie Resurrection… or, as it really should be titled, ‘How NOT To Survive The Zombie Apocalypse’. In this micro-budget British horror comedy, a rag-tag group of survivors are marching their way across the countryside as the oft-seen zombie apocalypse rages on around them. Their destination: the safety of a place called Imperium.
Amongst the group is the stuck-up toff Major Gibson and foul-mouthed Scottish soldier Mac, who are escorting a supposedly dangerous prisoner to civilisation. Alongside them are various walking stereotypes such as the middle class father and daughter, the lower class motor-mouth chav and the excessively religious African lady. None of whom you’ll give even half a shit about throughout the entire course of this entertainment black hole.
When Gibson suffers serious injury due to stepping in a bear trap, the group decide to take refuge in a nearby abandoned school. Here, the roiling pot of idiocy that is the group sees them inevitably meet their deaths at the hands and chompers of the numerous walking dead populating the building.
But things have a pretty cool twist, here – this long into the apocalypse, the majority of the zombies are slow, rotting shamblers. Easily avoided, they don’t pose much of a threat to those who remain wary. But within the school there stands a special zombie who can bring the undead back to life simply by laying his hands on them. Of course, doing so in the midst of a horde simply means that the newly resurrected and healed human will be eaten again straight away… but the problem for our group is that this newly devoured person will awaken as a fresh kill – faster, stronger and more deadly than the rotting kind.
And this means that our heroes are standing right inside a figurative factory of them.
Now that’s a damned cool idea. DAMNED cool. Yet Zombie Resurrection doesn’t even bother to take this unique point and using it to change the game, shouldering it in a triumphant run to the finish line.
No, it would rather wallow around in cocksure attempts at humour, throwing up its jovial score and pantomime level overacting at every turn in an attempt to garner a laugh. Yet when it feels like it, Zombie Resurrection can suddenly turn on a whim and decide to be deadly serious – something which it also fails to pull off because of the foundations it’s already laid. Like trying to build a hut on a swimming pool of jelly, it just doesn’t stand up.
Alright, so perhaps that’s somewhat too harsh and there are a number of decent laughs to be had in the early stages of the film… but once it decides to court with seriousness and pulls out its Big Idea, the remaining 30 or so minutes of Zombie Resurrection are little more than a catastrophic squandering of potential that leads to an ending so completely destructive of the creative ideas at play here that it’s utterly infuriating.
There are a few good things about Zombie Resurrection: Jim Sweeney’s hilariously expletive-laden performance as Mac, Eric Colven’s earnest turn as scientist-turned-prisoner Sykes, some excellent low budget effects work and the pretty damned cool animated credit sequence, which details the origins of the outbreak and visually chronicles the rise of the apocalypse in a much more coherent manner than anything else that happens during this tonally schizophrenic mess.
There’s no doubt that you’ll get a few chuckles during Zombie Resurrection‘s runtime, but you can forget about any genuine scares or horror. Ultimately it lacks any sort of cohesion, instead attempting to hold itself together with histrionic performances that feel lifted straight from a comedy sketch show, while it pisses every ounce of potential that it had in its story and themes up the wall with complete abandon.
Just bury this one, and leave it there.
Left Film’s UK DVD release of Zombie Resurrection sports the trailer as a special feature, alongside the 30-minute featurette ‘Shooting the Dead: The Making of Zombie Resurrection’. Opening with a take on the classic Monty Python “… It’s…” beginning, which gives a good laugh, this actually makes for a darned good, and in-depth, look at the making of the film. Filled with behind the scenes footage, interviews with cast and crew, looks at the prosthetic work and more, this featurette remains consistently engaging and packed full of material. It’s just a shame that, after seeing the film, everyone involved seems completely deluded in their belief that the script and characters are actually worthwhile.
Special Features:
- Trailer
- Shooting the Dead: The Making of Zombie Resurrection
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Film
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Special Features
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