Anger of the Dead (2015) Reviews

• A for Effort

  davannacarter2015-08-04

  IMDb says this film was released on March 15, 2015. Today is August 4, 2015 and it already has a 2.7 rating. First, let me point out this does not deserve a 2.7 rating. There are way worse movies out there with higher ratings. Way worse. How is it possible that there are worse movies with higher ratings? Unlike other indie film hacks, the filmmakers didn't flood the review sections with bogus 10-star reviews and put up hundreds of bogus 10-star ratings through phony shill accounts. Therefore, I am going to give these filmmakers respect for being honest and not dishonestly have a bunch of bogus ratings and reviews. However, there are positives and negatives about this flick. Negatives: --editing is too choppy sometimes, which make the transitions lack smoothness; --the two intertwining stories should have been fleshed out more. Unfortunately, they were underdeveloped. As a result, the characters didn't have as much life as they could have had. And the story felt disjointed. --too many clichés in this movie had me saying, "I could see that part coming a mile away." --ending wasn't resolved. I don't mind unresolved endings. But the characters need to be truly engaging for me to go with an unresolved ending. It looks like there will be a sequel. --ridiculous human behavior. Seen this in hundreds of zombie movies, books, and comic books. And this one was no exception: characters who do stupid things that make you say, "Do you want to get killed by a zombie? Why would you do something so stupid?" Like in many zombie stories, characters in this movie will be out in the open shouting, talking loudly, making loud noises, or walk or sit around without being alert in case a zombie shows up. Why are characters in this movie shouting, "Hello, is anybody here?" when they walk inside a building that looks deserted by they also know could have zombies inside? A character says he just drove past a horde of a hundred zombies. So what does he decide to do? 10 minutes later he decides to pitch a tent and sleep outside in the woods. What? Why isn't he sleeping in his car with his gun at the ready? And why do characters in this movie sit around in parked cars out in the open with all the windows all the way down? When a character gets attacked due to such stupidity I can't muster the strength to feel bad for them at all. Instead, I can only say, "With all the stupid behavior they display out in the open, I'm surprised they are still alive." The positives: 1. No shaky-cam or swaying-cam. Shaky-cam is where it's like the cameraman is having seizures. Swaying-cam is where it's not shaking but it's swaying in a way that it seems like the cameraman is too tipsy to hold the camera steady. In both cases, they jar me out of the movie and make the directors seem like amateurs. 2. Not overdoing the loud "BOOM!" jump scare. 3. The actors were good. For many actors it was obvious English wasn't their first language and I felt they did a good job acting in a language that isn't their native tongue. As a result, the good acting made up somewhat for the shortcomings in terms of character development in the story. Therefore, I could emotionally invest myself in the characters to a significant degree. It's just that I would have been able to care for them more if the story had developed them better. And if they didn't behave stupidly at times. 4. The filmmaker managed to do a lot with the limited location. There were only the woods and a few abandoned buildings but the director still managed to make an engaging story with the little he had. All in all, this movie isn't anything groundbreaking. However, it is nowhere near SyFy Channel level quality in terms of clichés, predictability, and stupid behavior of the characters. They'd have to try way harder to get that low. The filmmaker definitely has potential. I can't deny that. It just didn't work with this movie. Some things were great, such as when he juxtaposed beautiful shots of nature with degrading human behavior. He knows how to be artistic without smothering the audience with pretentious arty-fartsy crap. Thumbs up for that. But other things brought this particular movie down. I believe he'll improve immensely in the future. Watchability of the movie: the movie has a short scene with a woman being brutalized. If that makes you squeamish then you'd better beware. If you're not squeamish with that (aren't horror movies supposed to make you feel squeamish) then you won't have a problem with it. The gore is little and the zombie kills are off-screen. And the nudity is brief. Overall, if you really want to watch this one, watch it for free and if you have nothing at all better to do. Otherwise, just pass this one by. Side note: good to see Italian filmmakers going back to genre fiction. Since the 80s, the Italian film industry has been saturated with romance, dramas, comedies, romantic comedies, and romance dramas galore. These films have a small market in Italy and an even smaller market internationally. I want to see Italy go back to their b-movie/exploitation genre film roots. True, their art films and historical dramas made them popular with art film critics. But their b-movies were internationally loved and the world film industry lost out tremendously when Italy abandoned their b-movies. Italy needs to make a comeback with their b-movies. Pronto!

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• A willing jump into the apocalypse.

  znowhite012015-06-29

  The latest entry in the saturated zombie sub-genre may not have much new to say but offers more maturity and technical competence than the average DSLR bloodbath. Director Francesco Picone manages to create dread and tension with carefully paced suspense and neatly-drawn characters even within the standard genre tropes of utopian hope and bleach-bypassed visuals. The result is a slick experience, if a familiar one, but with occasionally-welcomed twists and character reveals. The attempts to hide Italian aspects of its production, like many 80s direct- to-video foreign action programmers, becomes apparent at times, but here the acting towers over its budget and shines enough to realistically portray an American landscape. The standout in the capable cast, Aaron Stielstra, is given an emotional subplot that is both heartbreaking and morally repugnant amidst the already copious amounts of gore and convincing practical effects. The film even allows for a quiet, introspective moment with this character to reveal the childhood memories of his dog. Luckily, the filmmakers and performers are able to balance this sentimentality with all the on screen mayhem in a way that helps raise the stakes rather than shamelessly manipulate them with hackneyed Hollywood ploys, even if much of the music seems recycled from inferior products. Overall, a worthwhile production with some fine acting and thought put into it beyond just creative effects and kills.

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• Just another run-of-the-mill zombie movie...

  paul_haakonsen2015-12-29

  Anything that even remotely reeks of zombie, pardon the pun, catches my interest. However, unfortunately, the zombie genre is flooded with countless less than mediocre or low budget attempts. "Age of the Dead" (aka "Anger of the Dead") was no exception. This movie is unfathomably slow paced and has very little of any interest to offer a genre drowning in sub par additions. Truth be told, it was a struggle to stick with "Age of the Dead" to the end. The storyline is not particularly appealing and doesn't really throw anything to lure in the audience. "Age of the Dead" committed the two atrocities in the genre; fast, agile and running zombies, and the Classic error of doing zombie make-up on the face but forgetting about the rest of the body. And when I first saw a female zombie with fairly impressive zombie make-up on the face, but with smooth, non-decayed skin on the arms and shoulders I was just ready to give up on the movie. The characters in the movie were as about as detailed as a blank sheet of paper. There was no background story, no character development or anything else of any noteworthy thing to make the characters feel real. "Age of the Dead" failed to impress or leave a lasting impression in any way that hasn't already been failed in other similar low budget movies, and it is not really a movie that you just got to own in your zombie movie collection. There are so many better zombie movies available.

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• It was Dramatic and Suspenseful

  Carrigon2015-07-16

  But was it good? Well, the beginning was good. SPOILERS: The movie starts out with Alice and her daughter at home in their apartment when.......a zombie comes a knockin on the door. This we saw in the trailer. Well, Alice survives and meets another survivor named Stephen. They hook up and have a few friends with them, so it's your basic zombie survival movie. Not everyone makes it. And there's a lot of drama in between. The movie jumps four months ahead to where Alice is pregnant. I actually found that to be the scariest part of the movie because it would be terrifying to be pregnant in a zombie apocalypse with fast moving zombies all over. And I was scared to watch the last twenty minutes because I didn't know what would happen to her. Turns out, how it ended is not what I was expecting at all. There is a dual story here with a woman being experimented on and abused by some soldier guys. I wasn't really happy with that part of the movie, too much violence against women. But her story eventually converges with Alice's story. This kind of movie you will either like it or hate it. I found it suspenseful enough to keep me watching till the end because I didn't know what would happen to Alice and Stephen. It's low budget and there aren't enough main characters. It really needed a few more. And there were times I felt the movie just came to a screeching halt with too much talking and no action, but it has its moments. I have seen a lot worse, I've also seen a lot better. For a low budget, it's average.

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• Better than most

  moorek2015-10-09

  Odd movie with two subplots that merge for a very short time but then separate again. Neither of them resolved for the audience. Horror is more serious as children and defenseless women are attacked but most violence is just off screen. Acting isn't bad but I did find it wooden. I found I didn't come to care for many of the characters. Lots of silly things that we've seen in other movies like running down a highway to get away when the bad guy has a car or sitting around with your car window down waiting for something to jump up and bite you. The worst was sleeping in a camp tent WITH a fire outside. Talk about feeling vulnerable. Having said all of that I still liked the movie. I found it different from other low budget zombie films.

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