Armageddon of the Dead (2008)

Oh my God I hated this film! I have never seen characters in a film so stupid in all my life, it even gives those in ‘Nuclear Hurricane’ a run for their money. Money! Pttf! As if anything was spent on this piece of crap!

Wait, $750,000? IMDB says that this film had a budget of $750,000?! It says this had a budget?! Where was the money spent?! Catering?!

It certainly wasn’t on the actors and actresses! Hardly anyone was able to portray any decency, let alone an emotion. The only two exceptions were Stephen (credited as Steven) Lee as Jack Hayes and Karim Irteim as AK. Those two were actually pretty decent, especially since this is Lee’s second film ever and the first for Irteim. Hayes and AK were the only likeable characters in this flick. AK even decides to go out in a blaze of glory when he’s bitten. That’s the only good news.

Because everyone else is horrendous! I had never been so mad at fictional characters before in my life. But who shall we start with? Let’s start with random rednecks shall we? Yeah, they’re not even supporting characters, but they’re still God awful! Because in every single scene they’re in, they call the Muslim characters terrorists and accuse them of causing the zombie uprising. Firstly, it’s painfully obvious that they’re not the cause of it, since they themselves are caught in it, but the rednecks even attempt to attack Hayes, who is a Texas ranger! And why? Because he and AK are actually friendly! These guys were only included to portray the ‘don’t paint all Muslims with the same brush’ message, but the rednecks are infuriating!

Actually, let’s go to the main characters now. We have Jenny and Sam Mills, played by GiGi Erneta and Joe Thackery respectively, a married couple who have left their daughter with her mother so that they can have a nice quiet evening together. However they’re interrupted by Nick, Sam’s brother who is played by Jason Harper. Despite only saying he’s just having a shower, this ruins Jenny and Sam’s evening. Seriously, Nick is yelled at for pretty much anything, he probably would have been blamed for the Beetles breaking up if anyone had the chance. I can understand why they can be a little bit annoyed as he has stayed with them for two months whilst he looks for a place of his own, but the thing is it’s only been two months! That’s not long enough! You can get start to get annoyed around six months but not two!

This isn’t to say that Nick is a moron though. There are times when he says insensitive things, including saying something about Jordan, the place AK is from, having camels. Wait, I just realised, AK says he’s from Jordan, but later says he was born and raised in Texas...THIS IS STUPID!

There’s so much stupidity in this film I need to break it down. Firstly in the supermarket, no-one hears people screaming! Jenny kind of has an excuse because she has headphones in, but she has to have very loud music on in order not to hear the screams. And what about everyone else? Why weren’t they too bothered?

This isn’t the only point Jenny is stupid though. A kid later gets bitten and Hayes handcuffs him and tells everyone to stay away from him to keep them safe. So, of course, Hayes is considered to be a jerk. He’s the only sensible one there you morons! Jenny wants the kid’s mother to be permitted to be with him, but Hayes doesn’t want to, prompting Jenny to say that he obviously hasn’t had kids. Hayes responds that he has a wife and child, but when he got back home when the crisis occurred the house was covered in blood and they were gone. He hopes they’re still alive, but has to live with the realistic fact that they’re more likely dead. So yes! Jenny is a bitch! Maybe she should get some facts before yelling things, or maybe think about the situation! It was stated multiple times before that Hayes didn’t want to kill the zombie-turning-brat, but wanting and needing are two different things.

But she’s not the only one to think Hayes is crazy. The mother of the zombie-turned kid thinks he is crazy, for doing what he should be doing! Even shooting one of the rednecks who was trying to kill him and AK! Then again this was a pointless plot point which goes nowhere when the zombies break into the shelter.

Sam meanwhile is so stupid he looks out a door, sees an obvious zombie AND OPENS THE FRICKING DOOR! He thinks it’s Nick’s coked up girlfriend, but 1. It’s obviously not her, 2. Even if it was, from her appearance DON’T LET HER IN! 3. I know you don’t know about the zombie uprising, but did you not think she looked slightly, what’s the word, zombieish? While being attacked by the zombie he slightly raises his voice to call out to Nick (seriously, SHOUT FOR HELP YOU IDIOT!), and he ‘accidently’ drops his phone in the bin. I say ‘accidently’ because he actually scoops it into the bin. I don’t even know how you could do that or why. THEN! Oh yes, it doesn’t end there, he and Nick devise a plan to use duct tape to restrain the zombie. The door is opened and Nick says he has no idea who the zombie is. This apparently made everyone just stand still, as the zombie attacks Nick and Sam just stands there for several minutes before doing anything.

But wait! There’s MORE! After defeating the zombie, Sam and Nick discuss what to do. Nick wants to call the police, but Sam stops him, throwing Nick’s phone into the bin as well (again?!), thinking that Social Services will take his (and Jenny’s) daughter away because the dead person is ‘on drugs’. Yes, because self-defence when someone is trying to kill you isn’t a viable excuse in this situation! Then, when Nick is suggesting ways of disposing the body, Sam says they should call the police. So why did you stop Nick from calling the police?!

 

But at least they have some redemption Sam sacrifices himself to save Nick and Jenny herself is later bitten herself, cruelly when she finally finds her daughter. Jenny decides to stay outside the quarantine zone and asks Hayes to shoot her. It’s actually a pretty emotional scene, but it’s instantly ruined when Nick finds he has been bitten as well, AND HIDES IT! And while you think the film would end here, it doesn’t. It shows how Nick screwed everyone by showing that, as a result, EVERYONE WAS KILLED! No-one survived, not Hayes, not Sam and Jenny’s daughter, NO-ONE! Well done for killing everyone you dick!

Granted the aftermath does actually bring up a pretty cool image. Amongst the carnage, we see the stuffed bunny which Jenny had been carrying around for her daughter the whole film. It’s slightly covered in blood, but is relatively clean. This object lying in the middle of a bloodbath, it shows the innocence lost in this crisis, but is also a stark contrast to the carnage surrounding it.

But thinking about all the stupid things in this film makes my brain hurt, and believe me there’s a lot more. Now, the zombies themselves were just stupid. Some ran while others staggered, they somehow managed to break through shatterproof glass, and the time it takes to change into a zombie drastically changes; at first it’s immediate then it’s a few hours. And don’t get me started on the stupid grinning zombie which tries to attack Jenny in the supermarket. At least they don’t sleep or roar like a T-Rex. Though they do a random shot at the end of the end credits to show a zombie crawling round a corner in a corridor, which the film fast-forward at one point, which I guess showed that there were still zombies around? Even though it was plainly obvious before? And just in case you forget there’s zombies in this, we see about five hundred shots of them outside the shelter.

And where were the two people from the cover? They looked interesting!

Everything else was just awful. The acting was bland, the dialogue was terrible, it does a ‘Birdemic’ where it lingers on shots after the scene has finished, everything was just horrendous. It’s worth watching with mates when getting drunk, but I watched it on my own without any alcohol. And I got a migraine from this.