Laikals
The greatest movie ever made..!
Rijndri
Load of rubbish!!
Skyler
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Nywildcat1
As I've stated in earlier reviews, all I look for in a low budget film is a good story line or at least writing that makes sense. I don't want to blame everything on the writer, since who know what happened behind the scenes, but you would think that at least over a 100 people read the script and could point out the errors.Here's the story line: An adopted baby dies by an accidental gunshot, and decides to take revenge on everyone in his quest to be reunited with his birth mother, by possessing the living and killing everyone that stands between him and his birth mother. Sound interesting? It was, until it went horribly awry.I have to commend real critics who are able to critique a movie without giving anything away ( Siskel and Ebert, I salute you), but I'm not yet at that level. So in order to properly express my thoughts, I have no choice but to reveal some spoilers.********************SPOILER ALERT BELOW******************************* The movie opens with a mother obviously possessed by something and murdering her husband (it's expressed previously that they had lost a young child). Next scene, a woman is attacked by someone else that also seems possessed, but the assailant is killed by the young woman's boyfriend. Boyfriend is held for questioning overnight (though she isn't). She gets attacked again in her home (after gratuitous nude scene), and the new assailant (again obviously possessed) is killed yet again by her recently released boyfriend. Cut to a scene in the police station that begins the nonsensical writing.The cop reveals that this is the third murder in connection with her. Laura, of course, raises an eyebrow and asks "third"? The cop then proceeds to tell her about the opening murder scene and says he did a background check on Laura and it turns out that the baby she gave up for adoption was the child of the mother from the opening scene. He found all this out with a phone call. Which would have been impossible for him to find out, as Laura's shocked response and non-recognition of the adoptive mother's name clearly points out. If the adoption had been an "open" one, she would have known who ultimately wound up with her baby (it is later revealed that the child was placed with foster parents first, who she also didn't know about. More on that later). In a "closed" adoption, the officer could have found out that Laura gave a child up for adoption, but he would never known to whom, as records in a closed adoption are sealed and can only be opened under extenuating circumstances, and even then that would be highly difficult. So there was no way he would be able to find out that information, let alone make a link to Laura.Laura, of course, starts investigating on her own, breaks into the adoption agency (which apparently doesn't have an alarm) and tracks down the original foster parents. A couple of religious fanatics that don't know who Laura is. Apparently Laura's child is taken away from them for being "too Christian", though exact reasons are never given. When the child is taken away from the foster mother, she curses him, which leads to the entire plot. But why curse the child? If the foster mother has this kind of power, why not curse the people who took the child away? Why not everyone who's against your religious convictions? It would have made more sense if she were a Satanist or something (to add to the supernatural element). Anyway, she also winds up getting killed.Moving on. Apparently this kid is really busy and possesses a lot of different people. Her own mother included (who was totally miscast. She was an incredibly beautiful woman who was obviously only a few years, if not the same age, as the lead and was probably hired on her looks). Now here's the rub: everyone who survives being possessed knows exactly who they were possessed by. This is incredibly evident when the original cop mentioned above was also possessed. After he attempts to kill Laura, he heads to the jail to release the boyfriend, saying he now realizes what's going on and he's not guilty. Ummm, if you now know what's going on, where's the reinforcements to protect Laura? I understand that you can't tell the rest of the police force what's going on (who would believe you), but you do nothing? If you have the ability to unseal adoption records with a single phone call, you can certainly try to do something to resolve the situation.Now here comes the sickest part of the movie, which, if the rest of the movie lived up to it's premise, this would have been brilliant. Laura figures out that the only thing that the spirit of her baby wants is to be reunited with it's birth mother (which is contradictory, since all it seemed it wanted to do was kill her throughout the entire film). Her boyfriend (who is not the original father) becomes possessed as well after being released from prison, and while attempting to kill her, Laura says something to the effect of "come to Mommy. Mommy loves you" which seems to calm him. What does she do next? Decide to have sex with her possessed boyfriend (thereby actually having sex with her son) in order to become pregnant again. Sick and incestuous and could've had a lot more impact if the rest of the film wasn't so poorly thought out.This movie had the potential to be a great little horror film, but turned out to be an example of when a great idea is poorly executed. I only wish that someone had the resolve to point out all the flaws in the script prior to filming. Still, it's worth a view if only to see what could've been.
MBunge
Firstly, this is NOT a zombie movie. It's not a movie about zombies. There are no zombies in this movie. I rented this thing because of a DVD cover that made me think it was a zombie flick. I was terribly deceived.Secondly, remember the most awful zombie film you've ever seen. Rise of the Dead is even worse than that. I know that's an amazing thing to claim because the living dead genre has probably got the worst quality-to-crap ratio in all of cinema. The truly great zombie movies can be counted on the fingers of one hand and you can number the good ones before running out of toes. That leaves a legion or two of zombie films that range from mediocre to "I can't believe I'm watching this garbage". Rise of the Dead outstinks them all.Thirdly, pretend that Rob Zombie had a brother who was an even less talented filmmaker. I know it's difficult to conceive of anyone THAT inept and horrid, especially if you've seen House of 1000 Corpses or Zombie's version of Halloween II, but bear with me. Now imagine Zombie's colossally clueless bro making a movie about teen pregnancy where the moral of the story isn't preaching abstinence or sexual responsibility, it's that babies are literally life-destroying monsters and the women who love them are crazy bitches. Essentially, Rise of the Dead is the world's worst Afterschool Special on the virtues and advantages of abortion.The story, and I use the word "story" loosely, concerns a young woman named Laura (Erin Welk). Everywhere Laura goes, people start drooling and trying to kill her. Well, this one guy who chases her down the street appears to be auditioning for the new season of "So You Think You Can Dance?", but he may have been trying to Electric Boogaloo her to death.After hearing a lot of bad dialog from a lot of bad actors on a lot of bad sets, we find out that the people trying to kill Laura are all connected to the baby boy she gave up for adoption as a teenager and that the only way for Laura to save herself is to indulge in some spiritual incest. I'm not going to explain what any of that means in any further detail because I already lost enough brain cells watching Rise of the Dead the first time. If I dwell on it any longer I'm afraid I'll lose the ability to clothe and feed myself.This is yet another film made by people with no talent and very little money only because modern technology allows people with no talent and very little money to make movies. Rise of the Dead does have a couple of reasonably cute chicks who get naked and its atrociousness does reach the level of unintentional comedy a few times in its short, 72 minute run time. Those minuscule positives don't change the fact that this thing should never have been made and should never, ever, ever be watched.
TheBrandon-1
This movie can be briefly summarized in one sentence: Lionsgate's attempt to capitalize on the increasing popularity of the "zombie" genre.Viewers be warned: This is NOT a zombie movie!! In the horror genre, it is actually an OK movie. The acting was top-notch for the budget, and the special effects were tastefully done (while the nudity, unfortunately, was not). This movie would have won a 5 from me if not for one simple problem: The poster (and the DVD box art!) and plot synopsis of this movie (and subsequently, the genre it was defined as!) DO NOT match the plot AT ALL. It's almost like they didn't think anyone would notice! I sat down to this film hoping for another Romero-style zombie bloodbath; I left even more disappointed than I was at the new "Day of the Dead." And trust me, I was disappointed.
durantr-1
Just watched this movie on one of those bootleg movie sites (I would mention it but the M.P.A.A. might shut them down like they did with TV Links, but I digress, this flick was aaaiiight, as far as your B movies go. The acting was second rate but the kill scenes were great, bloody was gory man, just the way I like them, ha ha ha. There was a scene where the mom and daughter were arguing I had to rewind twice to catch something, hee, the mom asked "Where do you think you're going?", before the daughter even reached for her jacket! brrrrooother. The title is what caught me eye. I thought it would be a zombie flick, but it was far from that, oh yea, check out the scene when the kid grabs the gun oh man, this was a baad flick, hence B movie I suppose, oh well, Hollywood keeps turning them out, and we continue to watch them. All in all, it was worth watching. Okay gotta go, love ya, buh bye Grouphome