Rise of the Dead Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

U.S. 2007
Director: William Wedig
Cast: Erin Wilk, Stephen Seidel, Jaime Whitlock, Chris Ferry, Peter Blitzer
Rating: R
Release Date: November 13th 2007
Running Time: 1 hour 11 mins 39 secs

The Movie Review

Rise of the Dead film still 1


RISE of the DEAD
Storyline:
Cast:
Ending:
Overall:

I always welcome Zombie flicks with arms wide open, and if you have the same fondness of Zombie flick like me, any title that goes "blank blank blank OF THE DEAD", might intrigue you at the very least take a brief look of its cover. It reminds us of Zombie's Papa George A. Romero, and this time it is not his movie, but Rise of the Dead sure does deserve at least one play for zombie movie fans and general horror aficionados alike.

It's a peaceful regular day in the city of Dudley, Ohio, where Laura Childs (Erin Wilk) catches his boyfriend, Jack (Stephen Seidel), is flirting with Laura's sexy roommate Amber (Jaime Whitlock). So she leaves him and walks to her home alone when suddenly a zombie is coming out of nowhere to attack her. Though she finally survives, but it is getting more and more strange when one by one the people around Laura seem to be infected and becoming flesh-eating zombies, and it's all seem to be connected with the confused Laura. What is happening in this city? And what does it have to do with Laura?

--Start of Spoiler Possibility Alert--
As you might already familiar, Romero's movies always touch and insinuate social problems at the time of its released, especially concerning social classes. His movies are not merely horror for the horror's sake. And intentional or not but Rise of the Dead turns out doesn't only 'borrow' the dead title, but it also touches a social problem that I must say has something to do with baby being aborted. So just don't think it's about Zombie turned by virus and stuff, and I agree with that changes very well since we have seen many of those zombie flicks and it's very hard to compete with 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later. And this is a nice change, a change which include a little bit of supernatural element, although it never manifests itself in a form of shadow.
--Finish of Spoiler Possibility Alert--

With a very limited budget in the pocket, filmmakers just have to make do with everything they've got. Storyline is one thing that could save the whole movie, and Rise of the Dead is moderately imaginative even though some plot holes and illogical things are inevitable. Good thing is all the actors and actresses in this horror flick are delivering good performance. They are fit in with the story, simply not wooden and not over the top. As usual, we got some nudity and violence on screen. Whereas the nudity is the regular bathing scene performed by Jaime Whitlock and the other one by Jamie Lewis which by the way adds the twisted humor. And whereas the violence is fairly strong especially the death scene on the kitchen, some of you might want to look away.

Finally comes the greatest part of all, the ending. Now the ending of Rise of the Dead is one heckuva twisted twist with enough creativity to match all those intended-scary jokes on the previous scenes. It is subtle but a mouth-gaper. The ending certainly lives up to the expectation. However, why did the director has to include that one scene after the big ending? Which is highly unnecessary? It would be better to end it before the smoking scene. But impressed that I was, I'm willing to overlook that and cut this film some slack. The ending is shocking!

Rise of the Dead lives up to the mediocre expectation of horror movies fans out there, although it's doubtful to make veteran moviegoers really terrified, but it has the required ingredients to make us sit through till the end. It has preserved tense and nice pace although sometimes drags a little, and with the presence of Jaime & Jamie who give it all, you guys won't regret renting this nice indie flick.