Zombie 4 - After Death review by The Grim Ringler

Zombie 4- After Death

Sometimes as a movie reviewer you have to take one for the team. You have to look at what you can do for the populace at large and just sacrifice yourself in the hopes that you might spare some poor soul from suffering through a movie so bad, so painful, that the psyche itself is forever scarred by the flickering images that its been subjected to. This is one such movie, and darn it, you better appreciate my sacrifice.

Zommie 4 is a movie that will stun and amaze you, an epic in scope and emotion that will take you places you had never even dreamed of going. It may be the next best film behind Citizen Kane. And if you believe any of that then you deserve the damn thing. It’s really nothing more than another Italian zombie knock-off made with no skill and little ingenuity. The story, if you can call it that, follows a band of mercenaries as they wander across an island that, rumor has it, is cursed by the living dead. One of their party, an anonymous girl you never care much about at all, is there on the island as well to find the truth about why her parents were murdered by ninja zombies and darn it, she is determined to stop the madness. And I gotta be honest with ya, I can’t even remember if that is really the plot. It is essentially but I found myself drifting off from time to time as my friend Oktober and I made our way slowly through this damnable mess.

Yes, you read that right, ninja zombies. I guess that, because the budget was so low, they had no way to up the action ante so they had the zombie actors spice it up by being very mobile, which actually just makes everything even more surreal than it already is. Most zombies walk after you kind of slowly, but then they will hide behind a tree, a bush, a wall, and leap out at you and put up a very good, if half-hearted, fight with you before you can dispatch them. Most of the zombies don’t talk, but later in the film, when the main cast is getting picked off and become zombies they start to talk. And one even reasons with another about why he should want to be a zombie. The argument doesn’t hold a lot of weight believe me. The direction, writing, acting, and cinematography, if one is to call all of those aspects of the film by those names, gives the viewer and appreciation for the direction of one Fred Olen Ray, and the acting talent of one Mr. Steven Seagal. Good god, the star of the thing is a porn actor from the eighties trying to go legit. It’s that bad! The gore, what there is, is along the lines of what teenagers in their basement can cook up and embarrass the people that work in that trade professionally. I mean, you look at a movie like The Evil Dead and you see what they accomplished with little plot, and no money, and it’s amazing, yet these chumps, who actually have jungle locations to use, and more modern equipment, can’t even muster enough energy to make you chuckle at how bad their film is. It’s moviemaking of the – hey, the other three (which are known in America as - Dawn of the Dead {Zombi}, Zombie {Zombi 2}, Zombie 3 {Zombi 3}) sold so why not make one more and rake in the easy cash. They didn’t even bother with a real story, instead mixing some mumbo jumbo about meddling agricultural scientists (who carry sub-machine guns by the by) messing with the locals (who are into voodoo for some reason, even though we only see them as zombies) and so their witchdoc leader decided to raise the dead in order to please Hell, I think. None of it makes a damn bit of sense, especially the ending in which both our ‘heroes’ die and for no real reason. It’s as if they just ran out of money, or rather, ambition, and just called it a wrap. This is, in all honesty, the kind of movie that gives horror movies, zombie movies, and more than that, DVD houses a bad rep because who the hell would make this damned thing? And why? It is awful, is irredeemably bad, but it isn’t even bad enough to be funny. It’s just, well, sad really. There is so little talent and inventiveness here you’d almost think the thing was a joke, but it’s not, and that’s what makes it such an abomination.

As for extras, you get, whoo, some trailers for other movies, and three pointless interviews (one, with the female lead, which actually lasts two and a half fact filled minutes in which you would swear the woman was lying about even remembering being in this trash), the highlight of which being the interview with the ex-porn actor, in which the interviewer asks him why he never did any other movies outside of porn only to learn from the guy that, oops, he did do other movies, with the very director of that zombie movie even. Oops! And then there is the interview with the director in which he actually tries to make it sound like he was making a movie and not creating a form of celluloid torture that will be used on some international terrorist some day to get them to talk. I think what I really wanted in the extras was an interview with one ‘Odd’ Al Festa who scored the film and added the rockin’ song ‘After Death’ to the titles and credits, a song so deep and moving in its eighties splendor that I moaned aloud in sorrow as I realized I had no lighter to ignite as the song made love to my ears.

There are a lot of movies in the world, and there are a lot of really bad movies, and god knows I have seen more than my fair share of them, but this is easily in the top ten or even five I have ever seen. An atrocity so awful that all those responsible should be brought before a tribunal and should serve time for this crime against humanity. And I don’t even get paid to watch this crap!

…c…


1 out of 10 Jackasses

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