I dipped into my Prime, Netflix, and Tubi lists for this trio of zombie flicks. Did any of them satisfy my hunger for some fresh zombie horror?
ZOMBIES (2017)
Tony Todd opens this flick as a detective who releases some prisoners from a cell during a zombie outbreak. The immediate action is pretty cool as they make their way out of the building fighting off the undead.
Then the movie focuses on one of the guys Tony Todd released, who has made it his goal to scavenge for survivors to bring back to their fortress.
There’s not much of a story here, just a bunch of missions. The zombies and corpses are gnarly good and the lighting is dreary and effective during indoor scenes, plus we get some gut munching, but the repetitive scenarios wear thin fast.
The highlight for me is an early scene in which the main guy has to save a woman who has been chased into a cornfield by zombies.
I really like the way the sequence is shot—the action and thrills almost feel like being immersed in a video game.
I guess the only other point to make is that one of the main plot points is that the main guy ends up reconnecting with an old flame. Even so, that detail doesn’t help give either of their characters any dimension. Note that Romero’s son gets slammed for having produced it.
VALLEY OF THE DEAD (2020)
Despite this Spanish movie being about war, despite it being a period piece, and despite it being about the military, I still gave it a chance because it’s about zombies.
Even overlooking all that, I simply could not get into this. Everything about it is derivative. If you’re going to make a cliché zombie movie, which most are these days anyway, it has to be a thrill ride, and this just isn’t at all.
A military dude and a young driver are forced to take on a dangerous mission and end up in enemy hands. I didn’t care about any of that, but at least people started turning into zombies almost immediately. Naturally the two men are forced to work with their enemies to take on this mysterious threat.
The humans quickly figure out you need to shoot the new enemies in the head, which goes to show we’ve known since the Spanish Civil War how to kill a zombie.
That doesn’t make this any more exciting. It’s just so typical. Sure the zombies look cool, but it’s all run and gun as the team of soldiers travels from one location to another. Worst of all, the big hunky bald hottie in the group seems like he’s going to be a main character, but instead his heroism gets the best of him—meaning, the zombies get the best of the movie. Blah.
BRAIN FREEZE (2021)
Brain Freeze is just what you’ve been looking for if you are going through a zombie dry spell. Checking all the right boxes for zombie flicks, it’s familiar while offering a little something new.
The social commentary set forth as we meet the main players in a pretentious, wealthy community is that they are all faux rich liberal snobs.
So how does the zombie outbreak start? A chemical company has created a fertilizer that keeps the grass lush and green at the community golf club even in the winter.
That chemical leaks into the water supply, and before long both people and pets are turning zombie.
Once the fast-running zombies bust loose, it’s nonstop action and suspense with a good dose of light humor. And what’s really cool is that the main character is a teen kid who has to navigate the zombie hordes with his baby sibling strapped to his chest.
The zombies are intense and get more and more gnarly as the film progresses…because it turns out they begin growing grass on their bodies. Ew!
To complicate matters even more for the main kid, he has to contend with twin women that work for the chemical company and are causing even more havoc as the community is quarantined. But don’t try to make too much sense of the evil corporation subplot, because it doesn’t totally add up, so just get on board for the fun zombie roller coaster ride.
