Too much of everything

That was an excellent one.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

First upon viewing this movie it looked to me to be another bad British horror film. It comes close, but not quite. From what I remember it involves a mass evacuation, a woman involved and then captured and finally released from a lab, a mercenary of sorts that turns on one of his own for disloyalty, and then a couple and a man that are escaping into the country side. Of the latter, a scene plays out where a man must choose to shoot his wife - a revolver is given to him to finish the job. This scene seemed a bit redundant for what was already bad - as if it add more cynicism to an otherwise stoic plot with angry, bitchy, bitter characters that must remain stubborn in willing to survive. I will apologize for saying it like it is a bad thing; but watching enough of these films leads me to believe this one will be nothing new and will play out the same. I stopped watching about halfway through and reclaimed about forty-five minutes that I would have lost otherwise.I do not recommend this film.Originally posted to Orion Age (http://www.orionphysics.com/?p=10770).

Anything that even remotely reeks of zombie, pardon the pun, catches my interest. However, unfortunately, the zombie genre is flooded with countless less than mediocre or low budget attempts. "Age of the Dead" (aka "Anger of the Dead") was no exception.This movie is unfathomably slow paced and has very little of any interest to offer a genre drowning in sub par additions. Truth be told, it was a struggle to stick with "Age of the Dead" to the end.The storyline is not particularly appealing and doesn't really throw anything to lure in the audience."Age of the Dead" committed the two atrocities in the genre; fast, agile and running zombies, and the Classic error of doing zombie make-up on the face but forgetting about the rest of the body. And when I first saw a female zombie with fairly impressive zombie make-up on the face, but with smooth, non-decayed skin on the arms and shoulders I was just ready to give up on the movie.The characters in the movie were as about as detailed as a blank sheet of paper. There was no background story, no character development or anything else of any noteworthy thing to make the characters feel real."Age of the Dead" failed to impress or leave a lasting impression in any way that hasn't already been failed in other similar low budget movies, and it is not really a movie that you just got to own in your zombie movie collection. There are so many better zombie movies available.

In a world ravaged by a virus that turns people into cannibals, survivors endeavour to reach an island, however, it's not just the zombies that are a threat. Right from the opening where a little girl gets eaten you know it's not going to be a fluffy DTV addition to the genre. Writer/Director Francesco Picone's offering looks bigger than it is with real locations, lots of gore and a steady pace. Zombie completists au fait with Eaters (2011), Apocalypse Z (2013) aka "Zombie Massacre" and Zombie Massacre 2: Reich of the Dead (2015) will be familiar with the makeup style and saturated look that the talented (and friendly) Luca Boni and Marco Ristori have delivered in the past. Here they hang up their directing hats and don producer roles (along with Uwe Boll who incidentally has very little involvement, House of the Dead - this is not). Picone takes up the reins and delivers similar aesthetics to Boni and Ristori. Jokes aside I tip my hat to Boll and company who appear to be single handily reviving the Italian zombie scene with another sub-genre addition. However, Picone's film is more refined, it's void of comedy, the make up is more realistic and the script along with the acting are better.The blood, bite wounds, severed limbs are effective. After the strong opening it then jumps four months after the outbreak with a road trip story that includes a pregnant woman Alice played memorably by Roberta Sparta. It has emotion and some tension between her and Peter as they are chased down by the sound attracted fast moving infected. The characters have to make hard choices along the way. Both Désirée Giorgetti as the Prisoner and Aaron Stielstra as Rooker are notable, their story is hard hitting at times with a nasty female abuse subplot reminiscent of Joe Chien's Zombie 108's (2012). However, when the story follows Alice and Peter and the zombies are in the forefront it works much better. The acting, make up effects and camera work is solid enough, and even though all the players appear to be named after characters or actors synonymous with the zombie genre it's not a Syfy channel production. Also refreshing its not set in the USA, the locations are quite interesting and to Picone's credit it benefits from a nihilistic down beat ending. Anger of the Dead (A.K.A Age of the Dead) is worth viewing especially if you liked the aforementioned films, that said Picone's offering is appreciatively far more serious and debatably superior due to it's darker tone.

IMDb says this film was released on March 15, 2015. Today is August 4, 2015 and it already has a 2.7 rating. First, let me point out this does not deserve a 2.7 rating. There are way worse movies out there with higher ratings. Way worse. How is it possible that there are worse movies with higher ratings? Unlike other indie film hacks, the filmmakers didn't flood the review sections with bogus 10-star reviews and put up hundreds of bogus 10-star ratings through phony shill accounts. Therefore, I am going to give these filmmakers respect for being honest and not dishonestly have a bunch of bogus ratings and reviews. However, there are positives and negatives about this flick. Negatives: --editing is too choppy sometimes, which make the transitions lack smoothness; --the two intertwining stories should have been fleshed out more. Unfortunately, they were underdeveloped. As a result, the characters didn't have as much life as they could have had. And the story felt disjointed. --too many clichés in this movie had me saying, "I could see that part coming a mile away." --ending wasn't resolved. I don't mind unresolved endings. But the characters need to be truly engaging for me to go with an unresolved ending. It looks like there will be a sequel. --ridiculous human behavior. Seen this in hundreds of zombie movies, books, and comic books. And this one was no exception: characters who do stupid things that make you say, "Do you want to get killed by a zombie? Why would you do something so stupid?" Like in many zombie stories, characters in this movie will be out in the open shouting, talking loudly, making loud noises, or walk or sit around without being alert in case a zombie shows up. Why are characters in this movie shouting, "Hello, is anybody here?" when they walk inside a building that looks deserted by they also know could have zombies inside? A character says he just drove past a horde of a hundred zombies. So what does he decide to do? 10 minutes later he decides to pitch a tent and sleep outside in the woods. What? Why isn't he sleeping in his car with his gun at the ready? And why do characters in this movie sit around in parked cars out in the open with all the windows all the way down? When a character gets attacked due to such stupidity I can't muster the strength to feel bad for them at all. Instead, I can only say, "With all the stupid behavior they display out in the open, I'm surprised they are still alive."The positives: 1. No shaky-cam or swaying-cam. Shaky-cam is where it's like the cameraman is having seizures. Swaying-cam is where it's not shaking but it's swaying in a way that it seems like the cameraman is too tipsy to hold the camera steady. In both cases, they jar me out of the movie and make the directors seem like amateurs. 2. Not overdoing the loud "BOOM!" jump scare. 3. The actors were good. For many actors it was obvious English wasn't their first language and I felt they did a good job acting in a language that isn't their native tongue. As a result, the good acting made up somewhat for the shortcomings in terms of character development in the story. Therefore, I could emotionally invest myself in the characters to a significant degree. It's just that I would have been able to care for them more if the story had developed them better. And if they didn't behave stupidly at times. 4. The filmmaker managed to do a lot with the limited location. There were only the woods and a few abandoned buildings but the director still managed to make an engaging story with the little he had.All in all, this movie isn't anything groundbreaking. However, it is nowhere near SyFy Channel level quality in terms of clichés, predictability, and stupid behavior of the characters. They'd have to try way harder to get that low. The filmmaker definitely has potential. I can't deny that. It just didn't work with this movie. Some things were great, such as when he juxtaposed beautiful shots of nature with degrading human behavior. He knows how to be artistic without smothering the audience with pretentious arty-fartsy crap. Thumbs up for that. But other things brought this particular movie down. I believe he'll improve immensely in the future.Watchability of the movie: the movie has a short scene with a woman being brutalized. If that makes you squeamish then you'd better beware. If you're not squeamish with that (aren't horror movies supposed to make you feel squeamish) then you won't have a problem with it. The gore is little and the zombie kills are off-screen. And the nudity is brief. Overall, if you really want to watch this one, watch it for free and if you have nothing at all better to do. Otherwise, just pass this one by. Side note: good to see Italian filmmakers going back to genre fiction. Since the 80s, the Italian film industry has been saturated with romance, dramas, comedies, romantic comedies, and romance dramas galore. These films have a small market in Italy and an even smaller market internationally. I want to see Italy go back to their b-movie/exploitation genre film roots. True, their art films and historical dramas made them popular with art film critics. But their b-movies were internationally loved and the world film industry lost out tremendously when Italy abandoned their b-movies. Italy needs to make a comeback with their b-movies. Pronto!