Zombie Massacre 2: Reich of the Dead (2015)

Watching this film is a frustrating experience; it's a mixed bag. Powerful moments, direction, location, nicely restrained CGI effects and pacing are punctuated with some wooden acting (Aaron Stielstra as Sergeant Calhoun and Ally McLelland as Matt) and some dreadful dialogue. We are witnessing hard-bitten soldiers trapped in an unforgiving environment facing, as the title suggests, the living dead – so naturally every sentence should be comprised of macho cliché and relentless expletives so out of context, the profanities are unintentionally quite funny. As a result, we spend a lot of time with people it is impossible to like. We can't even long for their deaths, because their stilted delivery doesn't provide us with any personality.Only Andrew Mills as Will lends his role any pathos, sense of fear or even, dare I suggest, personality. That is why, in the scenes toward the end, when he is all but alone against the modest hordes of zombies, does the tension improve greatly. Luckily, the end credits supply us with character pictures to go with the actors, because it is hard to work out otherwise, who is who.To concentrate on the positives, the visuals are stunning. There is a bleak oppressive nature to the choice of location, and the soldiers' sense of isolation and hopelessness is expertly conveyed. The film has a slightly grainy took to it, which enhances the punishing conditions – and by that token, the occasional flashbacks to Will's sunny, carefree childhood, come across as tear-jerkingly wholesome and idyllic, which imbues the return to his present predicament with an even greater emotional impact.The ending is an enigma. Will is guided by a young woman to the sprawling run-down hospital run by Doktor Mengele, who is responsible for the creation of the undead hordes (another lunatic striving towards the perfect solider motif). The woman turns out to have been an hallucination. And yet, the end would suggest she is the spirit of Will's mother, which begs the question, why would she lead him to his doom – because that is exactly what Will's fate turns out to be. On top of that, a final scene suffused in the closing credits seems to indicate Will's entire experience has not been real at all, suggesting a 'dream ending' cop-out.Zombies during war-time is a theme that has been visited several times ('Frankenstein's Army', 'Dead Snow', 'Dead Mine' for example) and works rather well. With a little more effort made to give the leads personalities, this would have been so much more satisfying.

Actually not really. But it sounded good. Like the title sort of. But then again, we've been there, seen that. Something that cannot be said about the characters in this, who are oblivious to what is going to happen. To distinguish itself, the movie tries to go meta or even philosophical if you will at times. There's a muddled time-line or at least a "flash", which seems unnecessary, complicating things further, getting in the way of any fun this could've been.Still better than the first one, this hasn't really put anything in its favor acting wise. Effects are decent for a low budget movie or if you're willing to lower your own expectations. But the story will not keep you at the edge of your seat, the ending will rather confuse (until part 3 will be released? If it's going to be released that is) than enlighten you ...

Another zero-budget zombie film, from the Italian team who made the poor EATERS. The good news is that Reich of the Dead is a lot better than that film, although still not particularly good; the problem is that the story plays things out very predictably on a tight budget, so there's no room for anything memorable or original. FRANKENSTEIN'S ARMY this isn't! Instead, what we get are a couple of characters wandering around some gloomy locations and occasionally encountering some zombies that shuffle around. The zombie threat is zero as is the horror content, although this is definite a bad taste vibe going on in the way the zombies are all dressed in concentration camp uniforms - they were former prisoners experimented upon by a mad surgeon.The one thing Reich of the Dead has going for it is some surprisingly decent direction; no shaky-cam work here, just solid cinematography which makes the most of the dreary and drab setting. It's probably the best direction I've seen in a low budget zombie flick, so it's a shame it was wasted on such a non-starter of a story. Too much of the slender running time is padded out with boring conversations on the nature of war and B-movie veteran Dan van Husen barely gets a look in.

This movie might be watchable if the acting wasn't sooooo poor! I mean how some of these people call them selfs actors is beyond me, it like they are robots, i almost didn't make it through the movie. A lot of the movie doesn't make sense, like the random flash backs of a woman in a field with a sheet... And why a zombie would drag a dead guy onto some stairs to eat him?? And how all of a sudden he wants to go to the hospital, when the whole movie he's like we should get out of here! The zombies look good but that's as far as it goes, with zombie movies if they are slow there has to be a lot of them to make a good zombie movie. I would say there was 50 zombies at the most and over half get shot down at once.Just don't watch it, it will just annoy you in every way possible