Zombie Quickies: when you need an undead fix

This flesh-eating foursome – Sound of Nothing, Bunker of the Dead, 5 Years After the Fall, and Isle of the Dead – offers a good dose of zombie variety, including comedy, found footage, military action, and serious survivalist drama. But are any of them worth a watch?

SOUND OF NOTHING (2013)

For a while, it seems like Sound of Nothing is going to be the sight of no zombies. The beginning of the film focuses on a father, his teen daughter, and a woman they capture thinking she’s trying to rob them. But soon, they all build friendships—until the father finds out the woman is being hunted by a military group.

This is when the zombie action begins, with the trio on the run, facing off against classic slow-moving zombies while battling it out with the military men. It’s all pretty standard zombie movie stuff, but it’s well put together, the pace is pretty good, and it comes complete with some gut-munching.

It also has a pretty positive ending instead of doom and gloom. If you’ve seen every other zombie film out there and don’t mind entering familiar territory, you might want to check this one out.

BUNKER OF THE DEAD (2015)

This isn’t your ordinary found footage film or your ordinary Nazi zombie film. It’s an awesome homage to first-person shooter video games. It looks and feels exactly like one, so if you are a fan of everything from Doom to Dead Island, then you’ll probably appreciate all the classic video game action that goes on.

Personally, I think they did a great job—the movie looks good, moves fast (it’s short at 75 minutes), and the POV is of a guy who has snuck into a military base and discovered the undead Nazis. He’s a hoot as he narrates/talks out loud through the entire movie (much like real video gamers do when playing video games). But he’s not alone, because he meets up with a live military team, and they must fight together against zombies and other creatures of the dark.

Even if you’re not a video game fan, if you’re okay with quick, dark, jittery footage and love zombie films, this is a blast. Some might find it annoying as fuck, but for me, it’s more entertaining than 95 percent of the found footage crap that comes out.

5 YEARS AFTER THE FALL (2016)

5 years after the fall, neither zombies nor infected are much of a threat according to this film. There’s barely a crazed flesh eater in sight. Instead, this focuses on an activist geek from the rich side of town who plans to travel to the poor side of town—and is then forced to live a life of murder and killing just like the people he’s trying to help.

He teams up with some chick in an old house where they pretty much just wait for trouble to find them. Fights with rednecks abound, and the geek even takes a kid captive to get answers about a sort of “crime lord” that controls the area. The kid he holds captive appears to be gay—he asks for a BJ in exchange for information. Sadly, he doesn’t get it.

Maybe this is interesting if you’re into that whole “how will people act during a zombie apocalypse” craze, but I want zombies and gut-munching, dammit!

ISLE OF THE DEAD (2016)

A military unit infiltrates a facility that has been infested with zombies after a crazy scientist’s experiment goes horribly wrong. Yeah, the only unique thing about Isle of the Dead is that the stars are cutie Joey Lawrence and female wrestler Maryse Mazanin.

Directed by Nick Lyon, who has made a career out of SyFy movies (They Found Hell, Rise of the Zombies, Zombie Apocalypse), this one is predominantly a continuous onslaught of zombies being taken down by head shots. Finally, the military unit finds the scientist, he explains his genius plan to cure death, and we meet some domesticated zombies…that even talk!

As generic as the whole experience is, the final escape from the facility amps up the action, zombie attacks, and gore. Plus, guns are swapped for hand-to-zombie hand combat, and there are super zombies—big, burly military zombie men, some of them shirtless! The final act of Isle of the Dead rules!