User Reviews

What can I say, its a Syfy Original. Of course its not going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Some of the special effects are off, the zombies won't look like those you would see in a million dollar production. However, if you're a zombie fan, it's your usual run of the mill zombie story. I found it interesting that they introduce a new zombified animal. Its your usual people doing stupid stuff to get in situations where they're forced to fight off hordes of undead. Yet, it's one of the better Syfy original movies I've seen. Decent acting, decent execution aside from some flawed special effects and the usual story line....people in a zombie apocalypse trying to find a safe haven.

I do think Ving Rhames wasn't used well, but I have to say I respect him for taking on a low profile role such as this one. Once again, it is what it is. If you're one of the people who loath Syfy originals...then you probably won't give this a chance and if you do, I'm betting you won't like it too much. If you're like me, however, sometimes bored on a Saturday night...this isn't the worse thing on television or on DVD. I've seen far worse zombie movies with far worse special effects.

I will admit that this is not the best zombie film ever made. However, it has enough good qualities to offset most of the faults. While the acting and special effects are clearly below average, this film does have a decent plot, good action and the director (Nick Lyon) manages to keep the tension throughout the movie. It also introduces some new elements to the zombie repertory by presenting both slow and fast zombies. The fast type being more recently infected. Another new element is that the zombies are slowly evolving by adopting basic tactics. Both of these new qualities actually make sense and enhances the zombie legacy for possible future use. I also liked the presence of Ving Rhames ("Henry") who always seems to add an intangible quality to these kind of films. Likewise, the inclusion of a few attractive females like Lesley-Ann Brandt ("Cassie"), Lylan Bowden ("Myrah") and Anya Monzikova ("Sara") certainly didn't hurt the movie in any way. In short, while this may not be a "great" zombie film it is probably good enough for most zombie enthusiasts to add to their collection.

Pretty standard zombie fare.

After a virus has wiped out most of the American population a group of survivors make a hazardous journey through a country teeming with zombie hordes seeking a rumoured sanctuary.

Being a Syfy presentation/Asylum production should tell you all you need to know about this movie-budget schlock aimed at capitalising on the success of the Walking Dead. Saying that I enjoyed it well enough. It was everything I was expecting with okay scripting, passable acting, tolerable directing and just enough action to keep things going at a fair old clip.

A few things however,

Ving Rhames has star billing and yet his character comes across as somewhat of an afterthought. His character, and the actor, are not served well at all in this movie. Which is bizarre considering his billing.

Why didn't the survivors take the sniper rifle? I mean you would think that you need all the hardware you can get your hands on, right? Pretty sure there was some ammo on the floor too (not just shell casings).

CGI blood and gore. Ugh. Always looks bad no matter how much you spend on it. And this being a budget movie? Yeah. Not good.

Lesley-Ann Brandt, who despite being a survivor on the run for months in a zombie infested dystopia, looks like she has come straight from the makeup trailer. She looks fabulous and continues to do so throughout the movie, despite going all Kill Bill whenever she runs into any zombies.

Zombies in this film set ambushes for the survivors. This happens about three times and I just find it bizarre. I mean, when i think of zombies I think of animated corpses incapable of cognitive thought just shuffling about mindlessly. I dunno. Maybe it's just me.

That CGI tiger. Absolutely horrendous. And not in a good (as in terrifying) way. Just plain bad, bad, bad.

All in all however I enjoyed this movie. It was pretty much what i was expecting it to be. I've seen better zombie movies to be sure. Seen a lot worse too.

Recommended if this is your thing.

What can I say about this stinker? Yet another "SyFy Channel Original Movie" - otherwise known as a poorly produced steaming pile of schlock. It actually took two writers to come up with this garbage? It isn't even good for purely mocking purposes. Makeup people - when you feature a zombie in a fight, make sure you glue down their prosthetics! Computer animation effects team - you have to animate the rounds going into the gun, not just the empty shells exiting the breach . . . Ving, what happened to your career? Whew!

How is it remotely possible that SyFy can produce such great original series, but the absolute WORST movies? For good zombie fare, check out "The Walking Dead," where you actually care about the characters and the writing, direction and acting are solid. Don't waste your time - avoid this one at all costs!

I have to admit that my expectations were pretty low for this movie before watching it, since it was a production by the company "The Asylum" - which has made A LOT of bad movies - and that it was made for the SyFy television network, which has commissioned A LOT of bad movies. Fortunately, this movie is better than average for those two companies. There are a few decent special effects done on a low budget, the zombie makeup is acceptable, and there is plenty of blood and gore on display.

However, I must admit that I was still kind of underwhelmed at the end. The characters are pretty weak - I don't think I even learned the names of some of them! Also, while there is plenty of scenes where blood and gore is shown, it becomes quickly monotonous - every zombie slaughter sequences looks exactly the same. The going-ons between the slaughter sequences are pretty dull as well. And the last fifteen minutes of the movie are extremely incompetent in their direction and editing.

There are a lot worse movies out there, zombie-themed or not. Still, I would only recommend this movie if (1) you get to see it for free, (2) you have a high level of patience, and (3) there is absolutely nothing else to occupy your time.

"Zombie Apocalypse" is so bad, it goes far beyond "so bad it's good", and becomes bad again.

Where to start? Well, for one thing, the special effects were incredibly cheap and cheesy. When a car is supposed to be on fire, all you see is a half-hearted attempt at badly superimposing some CGI flames. When a zombie gets hit by a bullet in the head, sometimes there is a slight spatter of blood, other times the head suddenly vanishes, and in either case the blood splatter is so obviously CGI, it insults your intelligence.

On the positive side, Lesley-Ann Brandt provides some eye candy, which however is more than counteracted by Ving Rhames. The attempt to interject some romance between them made me gag. I almost didn't make it to the end of the movie, but the movie did sort of redeem itself in a perverse way with the Zombie Tiger - one of the most hilariously awful monsters ever seen on big or small screen.

You might enjoy this movie if you like watching really bad movies and can provide your own MST3K-style commentary. Or perhaps you could play a drinking game and take a shot every time someone's head disappears. Whatever you do, don't take this movie seriously or you will be disappointed.

Three small groups of survivors of a zombie plague join forces to reach the ferry boat to a sanctuary that they are not sure that it does exist in the Catalina Island. Along their journey, they are hunted down by hordes of zombies and only a few of them survive.

"Zombie Apocalypse" is a lame, predictable and corny low-budget TV movie by Syfy channel. The story is poorly written based on the above storyline, with zombies that can run. The characters prefer to walk under siege of dozen of zombies instead of driving a car in the United States of America. The moralist fate of Henry was absolutely predictable. The special effects are very simple and there are many sequence errors in the edition. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

From the get go this movie is awful the title sequence looks like a 5yr olds attempt to copy any one of a 100 better made movies, the effects are poor the script is terrible sci- fi lost its way a long time ago and have just turned out trash movies for years. The only good thing they've done in years was Caprica/BSG they really should just give up now the production values on their movies are very amateurish.

Dawn 04 is simply the best zombie movie ever made followed very closely by 28 days/ weeks later. Ving please please next time the SciFi channel phone you tell them to get lost.

Awful movie I would actually give it zero stars if I could

Good story but since when do zombies drive cars, in some of the scenes there is traffic in the back ground, now this is either an error or zombies can now drive.

Scenes where zombies masks are coming off, and poor special effects gives you some laughs not that I think thats intended.

Still the movie is watchable though, nothing unique to this genre, a poor mans 28 days later is how I would describe this movie.

I would guess this would be a direct to DVD release.

Hopefully this is a first attempt by the company who made this, PRO TIP don't film this type of movie during rush hour you generally imagine after most of the population of the earth is dead and people are fighting to get to a safe haven away from a zombie plague that others are not driving to work whilst this is taking place.

Mark

By chance, I caught this movie during its premiere on The Space Channel (Canada's equivalent to the SciFi channel). I was quickly hooked into watching it, as it has several engaging characters and, for a zombie movie, a fairly good script. There are some satisfying conversations as our group of surviving humans make their way to Catalina Island, where they are sure things are better. We hear them discuss and debate the various ways to kill zombies, strategies for avoiding them, and so forth. There are some interesting twists on the standard zombie fare. For instance, "fresh ones" are more dangerous as they are not hindered by the slow stumble of the ordinary zombies with which we are all familiar.

Lots of intense zombie encounters along the way, some typical post-apocalyptic scenes (powerless abandoned cities, crashed jumbo jets, etc.) keep us engaged, and as with all movies of this and similar genres, we still have the usual annoyingly unanswered questions, like "Don't our survivors ever get thirsty?" Nonetheless, I rate this an excellent zombie movie for those that like them, more along the lines of The Walking Dead than the almost-comedic Zombieland.

Considering all of the praise being retweeted by Syfy about this movie, I had to check it out. Unfortunately, I wasted 2 hours of my life watching this.

There is absolutely no character development, no acting, no emotion. The special effects are terrible, and that's being generous (drag sword lightly across throat = clean decapitation?). No direction at all for the zombies; some of them do the zombie shamble, some of them move like they are running a marathon (I'm looking at you, female zombie featured in 2 scenes).

I'd have to agree with the first reviewer. If you want to watch zombies on TV, watch The Walking Dead. 100000x better.

It wasn't ALL bad. The Walking Dead is much better. This movie should be watched with many friends. And beer. Lots of it. Turn it into a drinking game. Every zombie that dies, drink. A person says 'zombie', drink. Etc etc.... Plus Crabman from 'My Name is Earl' is in it, he's cool. Ving wasn't bad either. They need some lore work, but not too bad. The acting wasn't bad, they won't win any awards, but it is OK.Had some fairly acted scenes. The effects were the typical crap SyFy spits out for their movies.i too, cannot understand how they make great TV like Eureka or Warehouse 13, then poop out this. I'd say if you're bored, or snowed in, sure watch this. Just do not take it too seriously.

I made it four minutes. Most of hat was background exposition. Dear god. Save yourself the shocking disappointment.

When I found out this was a SyFy production I must admit that my hopes and excitement faltered and faded. Usually SyFy makes stuff that is well below mediocre. But since it was with zombies, I decided to watch it anyway.

"Zombie Apocalypse" does have somewhat of a bit of similarity with "The Walking Dead" in its atmosphere, however, it is nowhere near that level of production. And the story in "Zombie Apocalypse" is pretty straight forward, much like most other zombie movies available. There is nothing new to be seen here, oh wait there is. But I will not say what it is, you will see for yourself towards the end when they discover what was dragging corpses up on top of containers. Do not get your hopes up though, because it was really an eyesore to behold.

The effects in the movie? Well, some were actually great, while others were downright horrible. For starters, if you make a zombie movie, don't just pain the zombie's faces grayish and forget to color the rest of the body from the neck down. Wow, that mistake is so bad, and it was seen all the time throughout this movie. On the plus side, some of the zombie's make-up was actually nice enough to look at. And one scene really had me cracked up and laughing my ass off. In the stadium, a zombie was nailed to a wall with an arrow through the head, and Cassie beheaded it by putting the katana to the neck, and then, wait, get this, just flicked her wrist and somehow magically cut through the entire neck, muscles, tendons, bone and all. That was so epically lame. And not to forget the hand grenade scene. Again, Cassie was in action, tossing a hand grenade and the explosion was massive enough to blow up an entire building block, but once the camera was back on the scene, the car parked at the explosion only had its motor in flames, where it would have been blasted over and in bad shape. That was so out of proportions.

As for the cast and their acting. Well they had a good enough cast. However, Ving Rhames (playing Henry), again? Come on, this is like what? His third zombie movie in equally many years? Now, he is not a bad actor, nor a super great one, but seeing him in yet another zombie movie was just not working for me. Lesley-Ann Brandt (playing Cassie), was one of the two most memorable characters in the movie. The other most memorable was Lilan Bowden (playing Banks). It was kind of weird to see Eddie Steeples (playing Billy) in this movie, he is just too deeply rooted in the role in "My Name is Earl".

"Zombie Apocalypse" provides adequate entertainment for zombie aficionados like me. However, there is nothing new to be seen here, and there were scenes in the movie that was downright toe-curling to behold. However, as a major fan of all things zombie, I just had to see it.

Unbelievable… I have approximately 460 movie titles queuing up in my watch list, of which probably 450 are much better than "Zombie Apocalypse", and yet I'm wasting my precious time on this worthless and irredeemably awful piece of junk. I even swore that I would stop watching the nowadays zombie-infestation flicks all together, because they're basically all the same. It always goes like: some kind of unknown but tremendous and fatal virus wipes out 90 to 99% of the earth's population and causes the dead to resurrect as zombies with an insatiable hunger for human brains. Subsequently, a small group of survivors – usually people that cannot stand each other – huddles together and travels from one desolate region to the other, hoping to reach that one magical place where the uninfected still have the upper hand. Throughout their journey, there are several bloody encounters with hordes of zombies. During each encounter, one of the group members theatrically dies but other survivors might join and reinforce the group. "Zombie Apocalypse" is a production of the infamous The Asylum studios, so quality-seeking horror fanatics already know to avoid this one. The Asylum stands for rapid and cheaply produced flicks that don't feature an actual plot but showcase a whole series of the world's worst digital and computer engineered special effects. The blood in this movie, for example, appears to be some sort of red dust that vaporizes almost instantly. Apart from the opening sequences – which actually mislead you to believe for about three minutes that "Zombie Apocalypse" might become something endurable – there's never any remote attempt to build up tension or atmosphere, and the characters (every single one of them) are the biggest and most idiotic stereotypes imaginable. The Asylum also specializes in demolishing the already ruined careers of washed up actors even further (I'm looking at you, Ving Rhames). Near the finale, when I barely even bothered to stay awake, the whole thing gets completely retarded as Ving Rhames has to battle zombie tigers in the harbor (I kid you not).

The big burly black guy wielding a hammer played by Ving Rhames in the movie was Tyrese in the Walking Dead comics, while the athletic black woman with the katana played by Lesley Ann-Brandt was Michonne in the comics. Other than being called Henry & Cassie and Tyrese having hair, they were basically direct lifts.

However, not a bad effort for SyFy - effects were okay and there was some good tense moments in the movie. The actors did a decent job with their material, the apocalyptic LA landscape was done fairly well, though I don't know if they ever explained that satellite/space station streaking through the sky. No big stunners in terms of originality - shamblers and runners for zombies, though they didn't expand on the zombies getting smarter/laying ambushes, either.

As others has pointed out, it IS a SYFY original - and we all know what that means, don't we? However, fans of the genre will have 90 quite amusing and entertaining minutes, despite the campy dialog, the goofs, the errors and the special FX my grandmother could've created on her sewing machine.

A classic "Getting from A to B without getting killed"-story with Ving Rhames as the lead - doing the best he can with a script that probably was used as toilet paper during the shoot.

I freakin' loved every every minute of this bull - hence the 10 from me!