Dead Men Walking (2005)
A zombie outbreak in a maximum security prison. Hmm, if there's going to be one that seems like the perfect place, right? No one gets out, it spreads, everyone dies, and there are less prisoners to pay taxes for and crime goes down. Or am I being too mean to the poor little lawbreakers? Whatever. This independent film (read low budget) filmed in an actual prison in California (Did they use actual inmates for extras?).
The plot: A man is seeing killing bloodied people right and left. The last one he kills gets blood in his mouth. Stupid. The police show up, he tries to kill himself with his shotgun (no bullets left) and he's arrested. The CDC of course doesn't believe that these dead dudes plus himself are all infected with the scientific whoopsy of the movie and so he is thrown in prison. Great. Yet another effective move by the CDC. On The Walking Dead they're pretty much useless too. Let's just hope that in the case of a real ZA crisis they are actually a little more helpful (insert sarcastic laughter here). Now with the penal system being what it is today, the fact he is sentenced and thrown into a maximum security prison just as the first symptoms of infection begin to show means either their process is super-quick or this movie is just super-dumb. You decide.
 |
| I'm in prison but I get killed soon so.... |
The now sick man is processed with that day's intake of new prisoners including Johnny (Griff Furst, a face you've probably seen a lot but not realized it, I'll have to do a page about him) although by now he's coughing his zombie junk all over everyone. Nice. A sadistic corrections officer (this is not a very enlightened movie - corrections officers for the most part are not sadistic monkeys just waiting for a chance to blow away prisoners) roughs the sick guy up a little and only lets him go to the infirmary when he starts coughing and half collapses. Johnny is then sent to the Warden's office (uh oh he's in trouble now - oh, wait) who tells him that although he is only a non-violent offender (unnecessary exposition, we really don't care why he's there), the fact that he escapes prisons as a hobby means he gets to spend the rest of his sentence in maximum security.
 |
| I can stop a zombie outbreak with my bare hands. |
The CDC, being both slow and stupid in this movie, send ONE woman to the prison to check out the sick guy's story. ONE. She comes in with NOTHING. No testing kits, no back-up, no way to get info to the CDC except the warden's phone if he lets her use it, and the movie's duh quotient seems complete. We have our bad guys, our dumb guys, and know that everyone is about to start munching on their cell mates. Sure enough, while in the infirmary the sick guy throws up on the doc who puts him in solitary confinement. But he manages to throw up more blood on some inmates. After continuing to do this, the smart officers let him back out where he proceeds to attack and bite one of the guards and is blown away by the sadistic officer who gets blood on his face. Do we care? No, not really - we just want to see our zombies and then the credits, thank you. The wounded guard is taken to the infirmary and quickly dies although he was just bitten in the arm. But of course he soon jumps up and bites the doctor and a lifer who is also a reverend. Johnny is brought before the warden again (popular guy) and the warden and the CDC woman question him about the sick guy. I like Griff Furst but he has an annoying habit in every movie he plays of having what looks like a constant smirk on his face. All he knows is the guy said he was infected and it was going to spread. Duh. Trying to make us care a little more about the people in there (we really don't though), the warden's son shows up, and there are several families in the visiting rooms. Now all are trapped inside the prison until the CDC gets off their butts and decides what to do (which they don't until the end).
 |
| Hurry up and piss me off so I can start shooting people. |
Finally we get what we've watched this turkey for in the first place - zombie action. One bites one bites one bites... well, in a prison it's not hard to spread the stuff around. Soon all these hardened criminals are now hardened zombies. They kill indiscriminately, much like they probably did in real life. Not our Johnny though. He's a NICE prisoner. For whatever reason, he and the CDC worker (okay her name is Samantha but she's so.... BORING) at first try to figure out how to contain the virus, but soon just want the hell out of there. Since Johnny is so good at escaping (Convenient exposition, remember?) and Samantha conveniently grabbed a map of the prison, the movie starts to move along. Slowly. Even for a zombie movie (and there are lots and a lot of the obligatory intestine grabbing scenes but not much spent on a zombie 'look') this is slow going. Every hallway these two run through looks the same - being low budget it probably was. As part of the 'oh that's a shame' humanizing quotient even though we really don't care, the warden's son turns into a zombie although not bitten or bled on and kills his dad and prisoners kill the visiting families. This goes on... forever. Just as it seems that Johnny and Samantha are going to get out okay, Johnny is bitten by a sneaky zombie (Sneaky? How does a growling, bleeding mess of a zombie sneak up on anyone?) and Samantha puts him out of his misery (oh yeah, she gets a gun somewhere in the mess) and he finally stops smirking.
 |
| Well THIS is mildly annoying... |
The end comes as Samantha finds her way out - into the yard, surrounded by high fence. By now the CDC in all its wisdom has decided to solve the problem by sending snipers to wipe out everybody in the place. As Samantha tries to flag down a helicopter to pick her up, they rip off NOTLD's ending and she is shot as a zombie. The end. Truly.
No comments:
Post a Comment