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Category Archives: The Walking Dead
Syfy’s “Z Nation” S1Ep5 “Home Sweet Zombie”
After a rampant, blood-soaked four episodes into the first season of Syfy’s “Z Nation”, the fifth episode showed signs of slowing down the film’s onslaught of zombie bashing and disemboweling humans and drives a nail deep into the emotional side of most of the characters. This doesn’t mean that “Z Nation” is turning for gold to bronze, but rather taking a path change that will keep the show fresh because sometimes, you know, carnage can get a bit old (yeah, right!)
Roberta, Garnett, and the rest of the survivors land in Tornado Alley country where a nasty weather storm is brewing and they must find shelter before mother nature starts to rain down flesh devouring zombies on them. Low of supplies, they bunker down at Roberta’s hometown home while also trying to find her long lost husband who may or may not be one of the living dead. As the wind whips all around them with debris and, literally, zombies, Roberta searches for her husband while the others just try to stay bolted to the ground.
Like I was saying, “Home Sweet Zombie” focuses on more on character development especially with Roberta, Addy, Murphy, and a little bit between 10K and Cassandra. Roberta struggles with the memory of being called to National Guard deployment without waiting her firefighting husband to come out to say goodbye and in part the reason why the group goes to her home. Roberta, through the first four episodes, doesn’t lose much of her cool and, in fact, she is downright ruthless, but episode five gives her character more girth than an icy vein zombie fragger.
Addy’s memory is triggered by the thunderous storm outside. A memory that recalls the death of perhaps her undead parents – my theory. She becomes distant and paralyzed by quick flashbacks of knives giving mercy to zombies. This is isolating Mack from his ever-fun and beautiful girlfriend. Addy’s story will come soon and maybe in the next episode much like Cassandra’s story did – a two part episode displaying their background.
Being a possible answer to the human race’s survival, Murphy pessimistic attitude and outlook on life has been nothing but a pain in the ass for the team who didn’t exactly want to take this road trip mission to the west coast in the first place. Gradually, Murphy is coming around to the idea of being with the ground mostly because of the fun loving Doc character. However, Murphy is struggling internally. The virus antidote might not be working and Murphy feels to slow transformation into a Z. To thwart the group from suspecting his physical transformation, he shaves his head and facial hair making him even more creepy. His scene with one of the zombies speaks to this notion and we’ll have to see what happens with Murphy in later episodes.
The little thing between 10K and Cassandra is more sexual than anything else. The tension between them can be cut with a knife. Nothing really more to say there.
“Home Sweet Zombie” is the “Sharknado” homage episode. Both “Z Nation” and “Sharknado” are produced by The Asylum so there lies no surprise here that this idea was concocted. Plus, witnessing zombies fly through the area spattering into trees and overturned cars can’t be beat. You won’t see that on The Walking Dead. Not a bad fifth episode and I’m sure we’ll see mroe of our fair share of zombie massacring through the rest of the season, but take this episode for what that is – character development.
This Evil Island is More Like a Luxurious Resort: “Zombie Isle” review!
When I first read the title “Zombie Isle,” the first thought was the popular survival horror game “Dead Island” where you can take on a horde of bikini clad, thong and thong wearing, tropicana-sippin’ zombies with various melee weapons. Sounds blood thirsty enough to be turned into a movie, right? Well “Zombie Isle” is obviously not the same brainchild from the people behind the “Dead Island” video game. One could only help and what happens to high hopes usually? High hopes are usually squashed and sure enough “Zombie Isle” was a big bust for not only meeting my expectations of being like the “Dead Island,” but for also being one of the many sheep in the undead genre.
A group of university students and their teacher embark on a field trip to an uninhabited island to study the habitat. When they split up into groups of two, all hell on the island is unleashed and the students succumb as meals for the zombies that inhabit the uninhabited island. Not only do the flesh eaters swarm the island, but a mad Nazi doctor looks to replace the brain his deceased love into one of the bodies of the gorgeous girls trespassing on his island.
“Zombie Isle’s” plot is, first off, way too scattered to fully explained how this island became ground zero for possible Nazi or U.S. Army experimentation – it’s not really explained. The Nazi mad doctor has a syringe he injects into the neck of the dead bodies to awaken them into flesh eaters. Nobody knows how he got to the island and no one really seems to ask. Also, the doctor keeps a giant three headed mutated zombie chained to a tree. Again, this all goes unexplained. Half the characters gets rip to shreds in the first 15 minutes of the film and that makes caring for characters really difficult.
On the positive spectrum of “Zombie Isle,” the gory schlock really is potent. Zombies scooping out brains with their hands, stomachs being ripped open and disemboweled, and brains being munched on. With the gory and the blood, the parodical nature of the film, especially with the two dimwitted hotties, can kind of keep us awake at times; as for the rest of the duration, watch your eyelids become heavy and heavier. The zombies themselves do a good job. Hell, even the three headed mutant zombie has a certain ghoulish charm to it even though it’s obviously fake and goofy cladded, but with director Robert Elkins’ use of cigarette burns and faux faulty-like film strips the creature is hidden behind the throwback grindhouse cinematic style. The cast consisting of Crystal Howell, Tony Jones, Apryl Crowell, Kyle Billeter, Davids S. Witt, and Jonathan Moody are seemly a tight-knit group of people who’ve worked on films together before. They feel comfortable in what they’re trying to accomplish, but their really is no depth in their personas.
On a technical note, the dialogue audibility is absolute crap. One minute you can hear the characters fine and then the next you’re turning up the volume. Constantly I was fiddling with the controls to find a ideal setting and just wasted my time and energy. Also, the soundtracks is very repetitive and drowns out most of the dialogue as well. The sure signs of low budget filmmaking and not making use of something better than to just repeat soundtrack audio. The foley sounds of squished heads and knocks to people’s dome pieces might as well come straight out of a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon.
“Zombie Isle” heart and soul likes with the gore effects not leaving the film to be an empty shell. The characters are the empty shells and the production kind have been better along with fine tuned story in which the parody could have stayed as some of bits were smirk-able. Surprisingly, no nudity for a zombie film with a bunch of university students, but that doesn’t give the film low marks at all. With that being said, “Zombie Isle” releases this Tuesday October 7th, but if you must venture into an overplayed genre, there are better zombie films out there that won’t leave you stranded on an island.
Syfy’s “Z Nation” S1Ep3 ‘Philly Feast’
Living in the Philadelphia area, the “Philly Feast” episode was quite the treat to see the “City of Brotherly Love” be taken over by the undead. Once again, Syfy and The Asylum grotesquely explode every bit and piece of body part in this episode never letting dismembered zombie appendages get old.
Z-Nation writers didn’t wait too long to bring in the cannibal group. Every apocalyptic show has a cannibal group. Z-Nation just happens to reveal them in episode three under the ruling thump of Tobias Campbell played by Rick Rivera (happy National Hispanic Heritage Month, Rick). Now, I love me some good cannibal groups because they’re always the wild card, but this group lacked pizzaz and notoriety. Pisay Pao’s Cassandra character couldn’t quite play up Tobias’s long pig enthusiasts. However, the ending result of the full on assault on Tobias’s camp was well executed in a ‘classical’ fashion. Cassadnra’s backstory now looks to be wrapped up tight and we won’t have to explore that anymore in the foreseeable future, but I still feel she has more to hide or she has more up her sleeve with her new found friends in Addie and Warren.
The scene with the Liberty Bell had me rolling with laughter and giddy with the sight of zombie bashing mayhem. Z-Nation continues to make the implausible plausible and yet somehow make it look totally believable with the ridiculous zombie fraggings and though I do like all the characters, Nat Zang’s 10K has to be one of the standouts. His sniper character is the hardest the kill and I’d like him to reach his goal of 10,000 kills.
Can’t wait for next week’s episode!
The Walking Dead – A Bad Lip Read!
The Walking Dead is back! Well, not until October, but a bad lip reading parody of hit AMC show about zombies has been released and it’s freakin’ hilarious. Check it out below!
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