Over the years, it has been shown that with very little money, a skillful director can put together a high quality horror movie (John Carpenter's "Halloween", "The Blair Witch Project", and "Paranormal Activity" being a few of them). So, when it comes to determining a movie's quality, budget is no longer a negative...
Ken and his mother have moved from Hell, Michigan to Grosse Pointe near Detroit. Upon his arrival, he meets the lovely Courtney, and her jealous suitor Chad. While Ken and Chad square off, an evil is growing within Detroit and slowly spreading towards Grosse Point... where Ken will meet his destiny...
This week's "What Movie Wednesday" winner was "Zombie Bikers From Detroit"- a low budget horror movie that feels like it was put together as a school project. High School, or College... I can't really tell.
The premise- as stated in my little synopsis is interesting- as was the title. Unfortunately, the reality of it was nowhere as interesting, exciting, or horrifying. There were too many questions left hanging, and the logic behind WHY the events were happening in the first place was nowhere to be seen. Why was a zombie army rising up? Why zombie bikers? Why Detroit? Why was Ken chosen for his role in the whole thing? Why was this movie even made?
See, a lot of questions.
The characters weren't much of a help to this movie, either. I couldn't stand the emo Ken. I wasn't supposed to like Chad, or his two flunkies... but I didn't hate them enough to be happy when they become zombie fodder. I just shrugged, and went, "Meh". NOT a good thing. I found the two cops annoying. The only character I kinda liked was Courtney, Ken's love interest... but only because she had a nice chest on her. Too bad, her chest wasn't enough to keep this movie afloat.
Some people would say that the low budget can be blamed for the rather poor quality of the movie. Unfortunately, given the success of some very low budget movies ("Paranormal Activity" had a budget of only $15,000), and the high production values of them, you can't do that anymore. That only leaves, bad scripting, bad characters, bad acting, and bad visual effects.
So far, "Zombie Bikers From Detroit" had bad scripting and bad characters. Does it also have the remainder?
Yes.
The acting was horrendous. Seriously. Tyrus Woodson pretty much just slouched and mumbled through his performance as Ken, while Bob Roth, Joshua Allan and Jeffrey Michael seemed to have learned their lines just before their scenes (or were reading from cue cards) as Chad, Scott and Fritz. Gabrielle Gamache was too loud and mechanical as Officer Erin, but Dave Cunningham did well as Officer Larry. Jillian Buckshaw (and her chest) as Courtney was decent enough, but still pretty awkward. I found myself wishing that Peter Cushing as Van Helsing would leap from the bushes and stake the actors through the heart for their crimes against acting.
And the visuals. Ugh... just ugh. Rather plain and ordinary (and lazy) camera work sapped any excitement out of the scenes of "carnage" and drained all the horror out of the "scary" scenes. The zombies looked more like lepers than the walking undead, and the grue was definately lacking- which is sad because there were a couple of decent opportunities to give viewers a real bloodfest. The "jousting" scene was interesting- but lacked blood, and the bike tire castration had lots of blood spraying... but a boring shot. The... "bike muffler enema" kill though... just made me shake my head.
If you're going to do a zombie movie, you can expect your audience to want to see blood and entrails... not a bike muffler sticking out of some guy's rectum with a small circle of blood on his tightie whities. Seriously.
From beginning to end, "Zombie Bikers From Detroit" was just plain "Ugly".
Special Shout Out:
I want to thank everyone that took part in "What Movie Wednesday"- especially the following who voted for "Zombie Bikers From Detroit":
Tanya Marie
Jason Wiggins
Matthew Little (from "The Wayward Tarheel"
)Zoey Emily Onyx
John Chance
David Stewart
"What Movie Wednesday" will occur again January 9th!
And don't forget to vote in the poll in the upper right corner of the page to help determine which movie gets chosen this month to be viewed during "Terrorpolooza 2013"!
So I really didn't miss anything hmm...
ReplyDeleteJust another movie to remove from the "Watch" List. *sighs*
Tanya
Yeah, it was pretty horrid. But hey, I suffer through bad movies so others don't have to. LOL
DeleteI agree with Tanya on this one...
ReplyDeleteThis is why I avoid anything 21st century/indie/zombie related UNLESS I've heard good things about it from reviewers I respect such as yourself. Just too little time to be wasting on dreck
ReplyDeleteThere are some decent zombie movies out there- "Shaun of the Dead", "Zombieland", "Dead Snow", the original "Night of the Living Dead" for example. The real problem is that we're over satuated with zombies right now, so they don't have the same punch they used to.
DeleteOK, That last paragraph just made me laugh! I doubt I will ever watch this movie, but this was an entertaining review! I agree, the low budget excuse for a bad movie doesn't fly anymore. We've all seen some movies where creativity mattered more than the budget. I didn't realize that John Carpenter's Halloween had such a low budget. I don't think it needed anything more!
ReplyDeleteYeah, he had a budget of $325,000.00 for "Halloween"- and other than the costumes, still stands up today. "Paranormal Activity" had a budget of $15,000.00.
DeleteOh man, I hated this movie SO HARD. It is kind of funny to see people screwing up their lines, but STILL those takes made it into the movie. So bad, it's bad.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I suffered pretty bad during the viewing of this one... almost turned it off part way through.
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