Audience Member
For a low budget movie, it has potential, but still suffers from the typical bad acting, bed effects, and corny characters. The zombies are a bit bland, and some of the scenes are a bit slow. The plot has a lot of flaws, but isn't too awful. This film feels like it was made out of love of zombies, and that probably is what helped it from being a total stinker.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/02/23
Full Review
Audience Member
This film is utter tripe, verything about it is poor, the acting, the camera work, the zombies, the gore, my god everything!!!!! Its like it was mad by a 13 yr old boy on his 10 year old Camcorder and is awful! Leave this in the bin where it belongs.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
If you've been with my journal for some time now then you most likely know of my affinity for the living dead. Over the past decade zombies have become cool once again, and this has opened the flood gates to a slew of new zombie films. While many of these films were awesome ones, many of them just didn't have it in them to make for a good zombie experience. Along comes a film like Ryan Thompson's Zombie Apocalypse, which reportedly was made on a shoe-string budget of $5000. While many big budget zombie opuses fail at their attempts, this low-budgeter uses its limitations in its favor and makes of a pretty solid film.
Zombie Apocalypse starts off with two college friends, Mark (Michael Empson) and Tom (Michael Harthen), about to hit the bar for some drinking. But along the way they come across a stumbling man in the middle of the road, who turns out to be a zombie. Teamed up with video store clerk Raven (Kelly Knoll) and the mysterious Miller (Kenny James), a machete wielding man who knows information about the zombie outbreak, this group tries to do everything they can to survive the... well, zombie apocalypse.
Like I said, Zombie Apocalypse is a very low-budget film and it shows. I assume that the actors in this film haven't had much experience prior to this film, so don't expect to be blown away by the performances. The special effects and make-up aren't completely convincing, but I'll give the film some credit for managing to create some adequate effects for the film. But despite the obvious flaws of the film, Zombie Apocalypse works because it follows what I consider to be the cardinal rule of a good zombie film.
And what is that rule? Well, make the film about the humans and not the zombies. The screenplay, written by Adam Goron, Kenny James and Ryan Thompson, contains a rather compelling story because it makes its characters interesting and with more depth than standard zombie flick characters. Instead of having a series of throwaway characters, the film has a nice small group of people, all of which have dynamic histories to themselves that really brings the film together. While the zombie mayhem was fun to watch, I enjoyed the scenes of the human characters interacting with each other more. Something that is missing from a lot of zombie films these days.
I'm sure that the limitations that this film displays will throw some audiences off, and I wish that wasn't so. Zombie Apocalypse is filled with the passion and admiration for great zombie film-making, and I feel it shows on screen. Ryan Thompson has made a film that may appear to be amateur, but I would rank it among some of the stronger horror films I've seen in recent years.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
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