Nothing like adding another derivative zombie film to the collection

While Resident Evil and 28 Days Later are the first films that will most likely come to mind when you first watch Devil’s Playground, you’ll be happy to know that all the zombie/infected traditions are firmly in place.

The film is set in England (28 Days Later), and opens with a guy from “N-gen Industries” giving a press conference about an experimental drug, with a giant “Umbrella-like” symbol behind his head, while we are treated to quickly edited, shaky flashing, sepia toned clips of the effects of the drug as it is administered to volunteers (Resident Evil).

Experience pretty much tells you what’s going to happen next. There’s an outbreak, lots of people running and screaming, flesh being gobbled, zombies running and doing acrobatics like never before because these are super human zombies, and major characters being plucked from the masses to serve as focal points.

Danny Dyer, the cutie from Severance and Doghouse, takes on zombies again, but without the comedy. He’s a cop who just got out of jail after shooting a boy, and now he’s looking for his girlfriend. And so is a hot daddy mercenary, who learned that the girlfriend is the only volunteer who took the experimental drug and was not affected by it, so she may have the solution to curing others. And it just so happens our mercenary hero, who has done some not so nice things in his past, has been bitten and is in need of the cure.

After we witness the first breakout inside a lab, involving a HOT muscle zombie in boxer briefs, a lot of strobe lighting effects, and some juicy nibbles, we learn that these zombies jump, lunge, climb walls, and crawl, all at lightning speed. Don’t even try to hide in a car. They knock the windows right out, and windshields are not cheap to replace.

As all the cast members all end up at the same isolated building, plenty of other clichés abound: swarming zombies; the living shooting at the dead but never really getting that you have to hit them in the head; TV news clips about the breakout; ‘kill me if I become one’ requests; heroes who need to redeem themselves for past wrongs; anti-heroes who plot to fuck it all up; a pregnancy; the most likeable characters getting dying the must gruesome and undeserved deaths. It’s a checklist of all the typical zombie staples—one I used when writing my novella Zombied Out. But hey. At least my zombie story has a big gay twist.

Disappointingly, there’s really not much to poke fun at because Devil’s Playground takes itself very seriously and pretty much doesn’t make any mistakes as it unfolds because it totally plays by the rules. So the most you can do is mock its unoriginality—which equates to one of the most boring fricking blogs I’ve ever written.

In a desperate attempt to make it slightly more interesting, I’ll mention that one chick in the movie played the lesbian on the Sarah Michelle Gellar series Ringer, and, I’ll repost the pic of the hottie from Doghouse. This is so sad. Although, that man bush is cheering me WAY up….