User Reviews

This is an okay movie if you find yourself in awe of the local high school drama productions. Otherwise this movie is one you probably want to give a pass. Despite the promise of an ecstasy type drug (Ace), there's very little nudity or sex. Which is one of the plot holes of the movie: the drug seems to give about 30 seconds of sexual bliss, and then people start drinking other people's blood. So you have 30 seconds of great sex and then start killing people: who would take this drug? There's a toss away line about how the drug affects different people differently, but still, it hardly seems worth it.

The only decent sex-type scene is with Amanda Phillips solo. She manages to be more erotic with her clothes on (although how erotic can the drug be if you keep your clothes on after taking it?), then the other actresses who go topless. However, she doesn't seem to be hopelessly addicted. Phillips has some talent throughout, doing an amusing Renfield impersonation at some points, and conveying the paranoia of the drug in others. Hopefully she'll move on to bigger and better things.

The other actors are execrable. Todd Swift is the worst example, coming across as a poor man's Jake Busey. His character Matt has no redeeming social value whatsoever: moving in with his "friend" Tuesday (how that comes about is never explained), slipping her a drug, leaving her with the tab for delivery pizza, and casually blowing off the deaths of two of his friends. However, nobody else is any better, Ms. Phillips excepted. Swift just gets more screen time.

Plot holes abound. Tuesday apparently kills two of her friends, somehow tracking them several miles as they're driving in a car and passing over hundreds of other potential prey. As noted, the sex drug only seems to cause ecstasy for about 30 seconds. The zombie- victims go from bouts of insanity to perfect lucidity. Some of the zombie-vampires wear masks, which prevent them from actually biting people.

The movie also provides a near-perfect example of Chekhov's smoking gun maxim: the guys find a functional gun in an abandoned house for no particular reason, and you know they're going to end up using it later.

And despite their relatively short run time, the movie is hopelessly padded with scenes of people walking... and walking... and walking... and staring off into the dark trying to see something. And then more walking.

Production values are non-existent, and the flashback historical sequences seem to have been mounted by dropouts from the local SCA group.

Really not much to recommend for this one other then Scene 6, but you can watch for the unintentional camp value.

A drug makes people black out and crave blood. Matt (Todd Swift) is planing a party where he plans to distribute the drug.

The film was low budget so the party was no rave. The limit budget made the party small with no decent music whereas a larger budget would of had 100 people in costume, Billy Idol or NIN playing and tons of people attacking each other. Instead it was a whimper. The background information could have been presented a bit more interesting.

This was Amber Heard's first major motion picture for the large screen long before Johnny Depp used her as a punching bag.

Guide: F-word, sex, nudity. Available on a multi-pack if you don't want any extras other than other bad films.

This film starts off telling the audience about drug percentages in this country and explains about some university people who created a drug that makes people do way out things. The effects of this drug seem to stimulate the desire for red hot sex which leads to getting thirsty and not for a glass of water, but for something more colorful. In the first scene of the film you see a guy putting a few drops of liquid into a young blonde's cocktail glass and not too long after she takes off her bra and he and she do their thing together. Gals and guys get over heated through out the picture and there is a very stupid explanation as to why this is all happening, it is a date rape drunk that makes you want to do many more things than make love. If this type of film interests you, you had better view a good Christopher Lee film about Vampires, you will enjoy the film and certainly not this ONE !

I went into this movie for two reasons. The first was Amber Heard and the second was my familiarity with another one of Johnson's movies, Crushed (2009). I stumbled on Crushed more than a decade ago and I loved it more than I thought I would. In fact, I loved it to the extent that I recently re-watched it and still found that my love for it was not lost. So, when I went into this one, I had relatively high expectations - perhaps higher than most people's. And it's perhaps because of this that I found it to be quite a disappointment.

I mean, even while Crushed is not a masterpiece by any means and does have several issues that one has to gloss over if they're to enjoy it, its number and extent of problems do not by any means come close to those in this movie. Among the myriad of problems - mainly attributable to Johnshon as the director and writer - facing this movie are its poor editing, poor sound quality, sketchy dialogues, continuity problems, poor lighting, and poor casting choices (with the exceptions of Amber Heard, Eryn Brooke, and Marta Cross). One may, nevertheless, chalk these problems up to Johnson's having had less experience as a director at that time. Indeed, Crushed reflects a more mature and polished work from him suggestive of his having learned a bit from his past mistakes. Contrarily, some may attribute Crushed's appeal entirely to Natalie Dickinson's magnificent performance as Tara and maintain that Johnson's poor direction is simply just un-salvageable. Whatever the case, what I found to be impressive in both Crushed and this movie were the horror makeup and special effects which, to me, went above the poor quality of such effects that is the usual in B-rated horror flicks.

That said, even with the poor direction of the movie, several of its aspects (besides special effects) are praiseworthy. The first is Amber Heard's performance. She plays Shay, the best friend to the protagonist Tuesday (Amanda Phillips). Shay is a concerned and cautious friend that tries to act as the "voice of reason" for Tuesday by repeatedly begging her, without success, to avoid poor choices and the path towards horror that she's intent on taking. While Shay's presence is too minimal in her first appearance during the movie to make much of Heard's performance of her, her later appearances make clear the outstanding nature of this performance of her by Heard. For instance, in the scene where Tuesday decides to go to Sunset Park (the setting for the final showdown) to search for the creator of the drug (ACE) that's at the center of the movie's plot, Heard succeeds - and it shows despite the extremely poor editing in that scene - to be convincing in her concerns and and pleas to Tuesday not to go. This contrasts sharply with. Amanda Phillip's shallow performance in that scene.

Later on, Heard's authentic and emotional portrayal of Shay becomes increasingly apparent and captivating and she also succeeds in pulling off a "Scream Queen" scene in a manner un-comparable to the other actresses in the movie. But perhaps no other scene is as clear in evidencing Heard's distinction from nearly all of the other cast members than is the scene in which Shay is killed. In that scene - presumably under the influence of ACE - Shay tries to kiss and subsequently bite Tuesday but Tuesday gets spooked and defends herself by killing her. Indeed, in what may have been an early filmic hint to Heard's bisexuality, she impressively manages to pull in the viewer into believing that her comforting hug, strokes, and forehead kisses of Tuesday in this scene represent a romantic connection that is only then being revealed, before Tuesday's reaction promptly and shockingly disabuses the viewer of this notion. Thus, it is only through Heard's development of Shay's connection to Tuesday throughout the movie before this scene and her performance in the scene that the act of Tuesday killing Shay comes off as especially horrific and shocking to the viewer.

To summarize my views of Heard's performance in the movie, I'd say that if Johnson's casting choices were better, he should have reversed the roles of Heard and Phillips in the movie. The movie would have fared much better with Heard's talent representing Turesday than it did with Phillips' (no offense to Phillips). Anyone that disagrees with me here is free to look at the career trajectories of all the other performers in the movie in the years following it as compared to Heard's and they'll note that none of theirs compares to the upward trajectory that Heard's career took. The only other performers that I found to have performed at Heard's level were Marta Cross (as Monica) and Eryn Brooke (as Ashley) and, again, it's no surprise that at least Marta's career trajectory has been impressive as compared to the rest's.

Besides Amber Heard's performance, the other plus for the movie is its main message: avoid drugs, especially unknown ones. Johnson makes this message clear in the opening lines to the movie and in several dialogues in it such that it would be self-defeating for anyone to try to argue that it's absent. At a time when the USA was (and still is) plagued with a drug culture that essentially had been a public health problem for decades, I welcome such movies as this one for not just not having promoted it, but also having criticized and discouraged it.

I also have to commend the gender representation in this movie even though it does have its share of sexist stereotypes that go with Johnson's apparent attempts at catering to male (femme fatales) fantasies and sexual desires. For all the faults that one may level against Johnson's movies nevertheless, one that I think it would be unfair to level against most of them would be poor gender representation because women take leading roles, as well sizable numbers in the overall cast, in most of these movies.

In conclusion, while this movie fails in many filmic respects, its inclusion of Amber Heard, it communication of a positive health and social message, its above average special effects, and its commendable gender representation lead me to give award it a rating of 7 instead of one of a 4.