After hearing about this flick here in our very own forums I decided to seek it out, it’s been a while since I’d seen a decent indie zombie flick. I was sort of let down though, not because the movie was horrible but because I was expecting zombies and not hyper-violent “infected” prisoners with a penchant for gut munching.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie was much better than most independent movies coming out these days but I was dead set on some Romeroesque shamblers and not 28 Days Later types of “zombies.”

The acting was so-so as I expected to be, but at least it wasn’t “hover over the fast-forward button” horrible. All of the actors took their parts a bit over the top, or played them a bit too seriously throughout, but I have seen much worse in my long foray into indie appreciation.

The movie also calls for a fair amount of suspension of disbelief because there are more than a few instances where there would be no way in hell this infection could or should have been exposed to the mass population of the prison. For example, in one scene a few inmates are infected, they’re showing outward signs of infection such as being incredibly pale, sweaty and coughing up alarming amounts blood, yet they’re marched into the prison’s mess hall and forced to grab food and eat within the general population. Yeah right!

The gore flowed pretty steadily throughout the flick and I gotta give props to the EFX crew. The gore sequences were pretty outstanding and there was tons of blood flying everywhere, some really chunky bitings, and a whole slew of abdominal eviscerations that were of damn fine quality, very impressive to say the least!

If you’ve had some exposure to independent horror then I think you’ll enjoy this one, and it might also be a good first flick for those who’ve not yet strayed into the world of low budget horror home cinema. I’m not making any guarantees there because indie films are pretty damn subjective, but you could most definitely do a hell of a lot worse than Dead Men Walking.

Conjugal visit Oodles of gore!
Bubba the cell mate Spotty acting throughout.
Review Rating: 6 out of 10 guards with a God complex.

The opening five minutes of Dead Men Walking is absolutely excellent. I thought sure I’d ran across a hidden gem. The style and quality of the Dawn of the Dead remake came to mind as I watched excitedly.

Then the sixth minute happened, and it went downhill consistantly from there.

First of all, everything was green, it was like mood lighting. For a while I wondered if this was a Scifi Channel movie or something.

My big complaint was the lack of realism. Guards in prisons don't carry guns inside the areas where contact with prisoners is possible, it causes more of a danger than it solves. I'm not saying everything has to be ultra-factual, but would it hurt to watch a couple documentaries before making a movie that takes place in prison? Furthermore, prisons usually have more than twenty inmates, and cell blocks usually have more than five. C'mon, people will be in zombie flicks for a t-shirt, maybe even free. Zombie flicks are cheap because of the minimal need for effects, but if you can't afford a lot of extras make some other kind of flick.

I'll give you that the premise was really cool and the first few zombies looked great. From there we were handed unrealistic, almost unbearable dialog, ridiculous plot points and random jumps in the storyline. The zombies looked good at first, but later they were just people with fake blood on them. The kills were done cheaply, but I don't blame them for that, they were adequate and the gore was abundant. I just wish some of the money they saved on headshots had gone toward some extras or a proofreader for the script.

Some of the actors weren't that bad, I blame very little of this film's suckiness on the actors.

The truth is, it was a great premise if done well. Imagine the group, locked inside with an ever-growing population of zombies, no firearms, and now they have to escape into a world that may or may not be infected as well. This one just completely dropped the ball.

3 out of 10 CDC doctors who force a quarantine and then spend the rest of the film trying to break the quarantine to "warn people".