Apocalypse of the Dead (2009)

Oh my God. That’s basically all I can say about this film. Okay, I understand I need to go into further detail for this review, so here goes.

Released in its home country Serbia as ‘Zone of the Dead’ and in the UK and Ireland as ‘Apocalypse of the Dead’, we follow Agent Mina Milius, played by Kristina Klebe, on her first assignment, escorting dangerous prisoner, literally called prisoner and played by Emilio Roso, whilst being supervised by Agent Mortimer Reyes, played by Ken Foree of ‘Dawn of the Dead’ fame, and Agent I will be killed off soon, played by Miodrag Krstovic. Elsewhere though a train carrying a tanker of goodness knows what enters a station, where some soldiers (part of a military exercise) are being jerks and thinking they’re above the law. A guard on the tanker is shot and chemicals are released, turning all but a professor, played by Steve Agnew, into zombies.

Now, to start off with this film has some of the worst dubbing I have ever seen. The voiceovers don’t even sound realistic, let alone match the mouth movements. There were even points when people weren’t even opening their mouths, yet the voices continued. What was wrong movie? You didn’t think subtitles were a good idea? The audience can read! We can handle it! It would certainly have been better than the horrendous dubbing.

Second, the acting was God awful as well. Ken Foree was the only strong actor in this, but even then at times it’s like he said “Screw this,”. Kristina Klebe was just terrible, she couldn’t deliver a line with a shred of dignity, and she had the same vacant expression on her face throughout the whole film. Emilio Roso was okay with his facial expressions, but that’s the range of his acting talent. Everyone else meanwhile was just bland; it would appear they had decent, interesting characters, but the people playing them had the acting range of a brick wall.

Bizarrely despite this, Steve Agnew was actually pretty decent. He still had the problems the others had, but I actually still liked him. He was the only character who truly reacted with fear to whatever was going on, and he had a pretty emotional scene later in the film. It followed something stupid, but it still tugged at the heart.

We also have a group of three friends, there’s Jan, played by Marko Janjic, a wannabe journalist and a professional jerk. He tries to comes off as the sympathetic character, but we can’t like him when he was, at one point, more concerned about his camera than anything else. There’s a scene where he goes to prepare a boat so that they can escape, but he takes off in it, even leaving his friend behind! What a douche! But don’t worry, he dies in a post-credits scene. The other two, two girls, well, one is Yovana, and I’m guessing here because the one time I actually hear her name it’s barely distinguishable. Guess what? She’s a moron! She hardly does anything and when she does do something, it’s something stupid like removing the barricade holding the zombies back! I swear she looked high most of the time:

“I knew I shouldn’t have taken those mushrooms,”

Oh, it’s because she was.

The final girl is...I don’t know, I didn’t hear her name. I’m dead serious. I have no idea what her character name is and, therefore, have no idea who the actress is. She wasn’t the only one though, I had to quickly go through the film again just to get Yovana and Jan’s names. That’s one of the major problems with this film; how can I care about these characters, if I can’t even get their names?

And one other person whose name was not mentioned was Armageddon, played by Vukota Brajovic. Yes, his name is Armageddon. At least I think his name is, as mentioned I didn’t hear his name and only got this from IMDB. My God was he terrible. He apparently lived at a nunnery, where they taught him all he needed to take on the zombie Apocalypse. Seriously! He asks a zombie-turning-nun if the “prophecy” was coming true! The only part of his acting I can comment on is his vacant expression about 95% of the time and his smirk the remaining 5%. I can’t comment on anything else because he was the recipient of the worst dubbing in the entire film! And I’m pretty sure he was suppose to be the same guy on the front of the box, the only problem is it isn’t! It would have made sense if he played an antagonist, but he just plays some random mild religious fanatic who pops up to save other characters whenever they need help.

But that isn’t the extent of this films stupidity! Oh God no! Prisoner does a random slow motion leap to shoot at zombies (which are obstructed by a barrier) which was effectively pointless, Armageddon appears to have an endless supply of every single weapon imaginable, and this ‘military exercise’ is a plot point used to explain why nothing works! “Your mobile won’t work because of the military exercise, but the landline might work. The trains aren’t stopping because of the military exercise. You car broke down because of the military exercise,”, and we aren’t even told what the military exercise is for! I think it was a cover-up so that the train carrying the chemicals can go through, I kinda lost attention at one point. And zombies roaring and sleeping. SLEEPING!

And we have the most pointless characters to ever appear on screen, the President, played by Nenard Ciric, his secretary, played by Maria Kawecka, and I think it was the Chief of Bureau, played by Eugeni Roig. How pointless are they? They have no impact on the plot whatsoever! The President and Chief guy may be responsible for the chemical train (again, I wasn’t really paying attention, I had fallen into a mini-coma at this point), but apart from that they were meaningless. At least Ciric was actually pretty decent in his role, I’ll admit that, but Kawecka sounded like she was reading her lines off-camera...badly, and Roig was forgettable.

Prisoner also seems to know everything to do with the zombies; how to kill them, how they infect one another. And why? “Instinct,”. Bullshit! It is later revealed that the zombie infection had happened before when he was a kid, which resulted in his father’s death, but it still left the viewer with a very long time to be angry. And where did this happen before? Chernobyl. That’s right, Chernobyl. And you remember that real life nuclear incident that rendered Chernobyl a wasteland, killed thousands of people and caused a radioactive dust cloud to drift over Europe? Yeah, that was a cover-up to hide the zombie infection......ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

In its defence, it did pretty good on such a low budget, the finale was pretty fun and I did enjoy the references to ‘Dawn of the Dead’, like Foree saying that a mall would be too hard to secure and that the zombies will get in eventually. But overall it was a complete mess. Horrible dialogue, terrible acting with the exception of the legendary Ken Foree, mediocre effects and a stupid plot line makes this one awful film.

And a character called Armageddon? What a stupid name for a character! Boy, a character called Armageddon in ‘Apocalypse of the Dead’. Can you imagine a film called ‘Armageddon of the Dead’?

 

Screw you movie!