Atomic Zombies!!! (2016)
Starring Jackie McKechnie, Shadow Beatz, Ryan Hickey
Directed by John McKechnie
There’s a slight crack in the door to the horror genre, and it’s sometimes how budding filmmakers get their foot in, gently budging their way into what will hopefully become a prosperous (if not otherwise notable) career in the industry – it’s those damn zombies, and let’s face it: the proverbial horse has been drubbed within an inch of its life on more than a thousand occasions, and get out your whoopin sticks, kids, cause it’s beatin’ time once again! Today’s lesson in overwrought severity: Atomic Zombies!! from director John McKechnie.
The film, which blatantly admits in its synopsis “that a group of useless survivors with no skills whatsoever” are banded together in the hopes of making it through a zombie apocalypse brought on by a nuclear power plant explosion. Added to the descriptive insanity…”it totally wasn’t a secret nazi research facility!” – Now with a narrative such as this, how could you POSSIBLY go wrong?? Well, there are ways. The film, quite simply put is a color-by-numbers presentation that doesn’t offer anything new along the lines of the zombie movie scope, and while I’ll gladly put forth an “attaboy” to anyone that constructs a movie from initial development to final touches, this particular film with it’s empty-headed characters and flagrant production flaws (muffled dialogue and strident backing tracks) just takes too long to come together and ultimately suffers under its own weight.
Fans of gore will be moderately pleased with the levels of blood in this one, but the viscera-exhibition is far too unevenly balanced to keep the veteran carnage aficionados satisfied. In the end of all things, Atomic Zombies will in fact, find an audience, mainly due to the increasingly ever-growing popularity of the undead sub-genre, but in this case for me, it’s “been there, done that, again and again.”
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Film
Categorized: Reviews
