Rise of the Zombies (2012)

Unusually powerful horror film from director Nick Lyon and a fresh contribution to the Zombie genre. With incredible imagination and originality, Lyon and his screen writers have envisioned a sort of zombie apocalypse where the dead are threatening the living with a fate too terrible to contemplate. A group of survivors take shelter from the chaos in San Francisco by going to Alcatraz. When it's learned a scientist may have an answer to this rampaging plague, survivors leave the island to search for the laboratory. Lavar Burton gives his best performance in years and Mariel Hemingway is outstanding as the anchor of the group. French Stewart is superb in a role that allows him to stretch as an actor with wonderful results. The scenes on the Golden Gate bridge are especially haunting and the imagery of zombies climbing up the bridge to reach survivors will stay with you for months. The vast vistas of carnage and the devastated bridge roadway are incredibly realistic and breathtaking to see. The idea of a Zombie Apocalypse is an alien concept to most of us and something seldom attempted in other genre films. Director Lyon tackles the enormity of this vision with gusto and his film becomes on of the truly horrifying zombie films in decades.

Review: As soon as I saw the zombies at the beginning of the movie, I lost total interest. Not only did they look completely stupid, the storyline that followed afterwards was really weak and uninteresting. The acting also didn't help and the ridiculous scene with the dead lady and the baby just went to far. As usual, the promoters put Danny Trejo on the front cover when he isn't really in the movie. The few scenes that he did have were promising but they didn't last long. As for the storyline, the whole vaccine search for the zombies has been used to death so the concept wasn't that great. I think that you can tell that I didn't enjoy this movie at all so keep this one off of your rental list. Bad!Round-Up: I honestly think that the director was trying to make a cheap version of I Am Legend, but failing miserably. I wasn't expecting that much from the film so I wasn't overally disappointed, but I was expecting some sort of entertainment. Like most of his movies, Trejo seems like he's just in it for the quick payday and the other acting are just happy to be on screen. Mariel Hemingway used to be quite popular in her earlier years, but she has really gone down hill. The same goes for LeVar Burton who used to be in the Star Trek series with them weird thinks over his eyes. Basically there isn't anything good to say about the film.I recommend this movie to people who are into there zombie movies about a group of people trying to find the vaccine to cure the killer zombies. 1/10

The best thing about this movie was not knowing who is in it then seeing them on screen, saying "Oh, it's Geordie (Burton), it's Ash (Linberg), it's Machete (Trejo), it's Randy (Suplee), it's Harry (Stewart) Whoops, I just gave away the best part, no need to watch now.But seriously; the cast is great, I like them all, the script was a typical zombie movie script, what is to be expected, that is not the problem I had with it, zombie movies are B-grade by definition. It was how ordinary every other aspect of it was, they must have blew their budget on the actors because the technical side of it could have been done better by teenagers on a hand held.It was really sad for those actors to be caught in this movie, Burton was the only one who really stood out, but personally I think he should have directed it. 3 from 10.

Well, not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but hey, it's not a _bad_ movie if you don't expect too much, and have enough cold frosty beverage.Seriously, it had a couple of decent actors (and the leads pretty much phoned in their stuff, so we can take them out of the Oscar possibilities, huh?), but overall, this was one of those things that cried out for excessive alcohol consumption. And frankly, the "good" acting was generally wasted due to directorial ineptitude. Yeah, Burton didn't suck, but gee, could someone make his character at least not all that predictable? And don't even get me started on the 0.5-dimensional Trejo character or Hemingway... I _wanted_ to like the flick. Zombies could possibly pose a serious problem if we neglect the possibility of an uprising. But NOOO.... We have movies of this quality to indoctrinate our youts with. Which isn't going to work if we are to triumph over the walking undead.So, if you watch this, consider it nothing but bland entertainment, with absolutely no training value.Seriously, worth a buck rental, if you got a good deal on the beer...