Director: Jacob O'Brien Mulliken
Year: 2014
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Meltdown
Genre: Zombie
Plot:
After awakening from a birthday party, a man and his friends discover the news of a viral zombie outbreak in the area and have overrun the streets turning everyone into flesh-eating zombies, and after getting to safety they realize the greatest threat may not come from the creatures as they suspected.
Review:
This was a pretty solid if troubling zombie effort. This one is pretty much based solely on the enjoyable zombie action present here which goes a long way towards being fun. The attacks and encounters here are generally fun, with the zombies screaming out of the darkness to bite victims in utterly over-the-top showers of blood spray that drenches everyone around the incident, barricading themselves in a group to shoot at the oncoming hordes in all directions and the battles with the creatures at the campground at the end which uses the swarming tactics to great effect featuring tons of great action. That doesn’t take into account the gore and blood-shed on the zombie deaths which range from gunshots blasting their head apart to being run over by cars, machetes run through their bodies, and much more which all work as well as the great make-up effects to give this a lot to like.
There are some flaws to be had with this one. The main drawback here is the utterly uninteresting and just plain moronic storyline featuring the guy and his cheating girlfriend that everyone else’s aware of. That this is such a cliché move that he’s too stupid to realize just comes off as lame and ridiculous, much like the inability to recognize it due to how blindingly obvious it is with the treatment towards his friends and leaving him alone on the birthday to go with the guy from work. This storyline doesn’t make any of this endearing or impressive but rather infuriating how stupid he is to take the chances to save her which puts them in jeopardy. That this is thankfully dropped doesn’t make the inclusion of this storyline any less uninteresting.
The last problem here is the film’s sudden change of pace and tone in the second half where it becomes a post-apocalyptic drama about his leadership skills rather than about the zombies. They’re taken out of the picture and used as a background threat dealing with either his relationship from before the apocalypse or the strange new cult that emerges out of nowhere and has no real connection to what’s come before. That we just throw the zombies away for this bizarre gang of unknown, Bible-toting psychopaths rather than the zombies that had been responsible for so much fun beforehand is a bizarre choice, much like the decision to end the film on such a cliffhanger that obviously sets up the notion of an unfilmed sequel for no real reason, leaving this one to end on a sour, unfulfilled note. These manage to drag the film down the most.
Overview: **/5
While there are some issues here with the storyline and some troublesome characters, when this one sticks with the usual zombie tropes this one comes off quite fun with all the requirements needed to be fun for the genre. Those who are comfortable with such genre fare or just a hardcore zombie fanatic could give this a shot, while most others who are turned off by the style or the flaws featured here should heed caution.
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