Rise of the Zombies (2012)

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The plot interest in this is that its set on Alcatraz. Apart from that nothing stands out, except that its surprising Levar Burton took this gig. Nothing really stands out as noteworthy or worth remembering.

Unusually powerful horror film from director Nick Lyon and a fresh contribution to the Zombie genre. With incredible imagination and originality, Lyon and his screen writers have envisioned a sort of zombie apocalypse where the dead are threatening the living with a fate too terrible to contemplate. A group of survivors take shelter from the chaos in San Francisco by going to Alcatraz. When it's learned a scientist may have an answer to this rampaging plague, survivors leave the island to search for the laboratory. Lavar Burton gives his best performance in years and Mariel Hemingway is outstanding as the anchor of the group. French Stewart is superb in a role that allows him to stretch as an actor with wonderful results. The scenes on the Golden Gate bridge are especially haunting and the imagery of zombies climbing up the bridge to reach survivors will stay with you for months. The vast vistas of carnage and the devastated bridge roadway are incredibly realistic and breathtaking to see. The idea of a Zombie Apocalypse is an alien concept to most of us and something seldom attempted in other genre films. Director Lyon tackles the enormity of this vision with gusto and his film becomes on of the truly horrifying zombie films in decades.

I love trashy horror movie. Movies with a budget of 5 thousand dollars but they still manage to make a good movie out of it. The excellent cheapo movie swamp zombies springs to mind. Cheap but they pushed to the boat out as far as possible. Martial arts and zombies make a good mix.I watched the preview of Rise of the zzzzzzz before venturing into the movie. It certainly seems to have a budget. It also has some fading stars in it. Basically the plot goes like this. The last remaining survivors are hold up on Alcatraz. The zombies cannot get there. Think again the zombies attack. Zzzzzzzzzz Then the have to go on the run to get the serum to save the world. Zzzzzzz This is feeble stuff.You do not like anyone because they fail to build up the characters at the start. Though it has to be said that there is a dog in it. That is why I give it one star. The dog is cute. If you do not like dogs this is a 0 out of 10 movie.Bad effects, bad story, bad dialogue, bad pacing, bad musics but a good dog.Really I wish I had not bothered.

What do you want from a zombie apocalypse movie? Social commentary? Rich symbolism? Literary dialog?Or, do you want wicked zombie gags, overacting, cheesy dialog and B-plus acting by B-minus actors glad to have the work?All my friends from paragraph two, welcome to "Rise of the Zombies." You will not be disappointed.A standard-grade zombie movie is the best you can hope for from The Asylum, whose previous living-dead efforts include the aptly named "Zombie Apocalypse" and better-than-it-deserved-to-be "I Am Omega."But the low-rent production house ups its game here, with some decent location shooting in San Francisco, some really gross zombies, more- than-decent acting turns by Jordi Kunte Kinte Reading Rainbow LaForge and the sane Hemingway sister, and a performance by Machete that's everything you expect and nothing more, because what you see is all he was paid to do.The Asylum seems to excel at zombie movies because they're cheap and easy. What's nice is, despite that, they seem to be having fun making these pictures and that fun is evident on screen. "Abraham Lincoln Versus Zombies" was a freakin' hoot. And the aforementioned "I Am Omega" was a more enjoyable adaptation of the Matheson novella than Will Smith's blockbuster ever could be.That's not so in some of The Asylum's other efforts, like its haunted house or found-footage movies, for example, which are boring and sullen. So, let's encourage the good stuff in the hopes it'll make more of it.This one's definitely worth the buck-and-a-quarter at Redbox.