DEAD MEN WALKING

DEAD MEN WALKING
By Aine

There were two main reasons why I wanted to check out Dead Men Walking, the latest zombie flick from Asylum and their first being shot on digital. One, Eric Spudic told me about it and his word is gospel as far as low-budget horror is concerned. Two, it was written by Mike Watt, frequent writer for Film Threat, husband to Amy Lynn Best, and all around interesting guy.

The DVD cover looks fantastic, and while my logical brain tells me that this means nothing, I can’t help but be wowed by such things. The amount of special features on the disc is small but well put together, and the design’s not bad either. Now on to the movie itself.

I’m tempted to say this isn’t really a zombie movie since the “zombies” are actually just people who get a virus that makes them act zombie-like; but then again, I think it’s been fairly well established in the genre that viruses are usually the beginning of zombie-hood.

Travis, who works at some bio lab where the virus began, is introduced as he shoots up his infected friends, screaming the entire time. At this point I was happy not only to see Eric Spudic (see a billion other reviews on my site for more Spudic goodness) all zombied out, but to see that he was also the zombie that manages to infect Travis but spewing blood all over him. As it turns out, this virus is super contagious and is spread through all, and I mean ALL, bodily fluids. More on that later.

Travis gets sent to a maximum security prison to “contain the virus.” Which doesn’t make the warden or the guards very happy, but what are ya gonna do? Our heroine, Miss Beckett, a.k.a. the super blonde, arrives from the CDC to check out the prisoner, but by the time she gets there Travis has already managed to infect about 3 or 4 people and get himself killed. Up until this point in the film everything was pretty interesting and awesome. I like a good government conspiracy, especially with zombies and mayhem, but somewhere after these things it got pretty dull.

The transmission of the virus is fairly hilarious though, and in my head I kept referring to Dead Men Walking as “The Incredible Puking Zombies.” You’ll see what I mean. I am still trying to figure out why people kept sticking around after someone started getting sick, especially after the first few times when it was obvious they would turn into a flesh-eating, virus spewing maniac.

The ending was one that hasn’t really worked well since the original Night of the Living Dead, probably because no film since has managed to portray the same political and social depth that Night did. Still, while Dead Men Walking didn’t manage to break new ground in horror cinema, it did still do well with the gore and the standard zombie fan will not be disappointed. I guess I just wanted a little something more, then again, I always do.