Teringer
An Exercise In Nonsense
Allison Davies
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
TheLittleSongbird
Dead Men Walking did have a decent idea going for it, but the movie comes nowhere near close to living up to it. It did have a nail-biting opening scene that showed a lot of promise and the zombie make-up was very good. Unfortunately that was all that was good about Dead Men Walking. The photography and editing are choppy and with a feeling of the making of the movie being rushed and with not much thought or care put into it. The lighting is often far too dark, in some scenes it is difficult to make out completely what was going on. The setting didn't look too bad, it at least didn't look like somebody's basement, but it didn't look or feel like a prison setting looking very sparse and severely under-populated. The music is too much of an over-dramatic drone and can drown out the dialogue. Not that the dialogue was any better, a lot of it was frustratingly silly rather than witty and really could have done with a read-through or two to check that it is comprehensible because a lot of it sounded awkward as well. Dead Man Walking is a short movie at less than 80 minutes but felt twice as long because so many scenes begged for a steroid shot, the story brings nothing new to the zombie craze genre and has a lot of predictability and not enough atmosphere. The attack scenes were heavy on gore- which was rather excessive and so stomach-churning that I was violently sick afterwards(and I'm usually fairly tolerant when it comes to gore) but very light on tension, life and thrills, it was very dull and going-through-the-motions quality. There are no characters to care for(cardboard cut-outs is an apt description here), and to the extent that you are glad that the body count is as high as it is and that you're rooting for the zombies. Which is not saying very much because even they lack personality and have little to do. The acting, particularly the female lead, is completely flat and like nobody wants to be there. The direction has little character or technical control, maybe it isn't the case but there was a real inexperience vibe. All in all, apart from the opening scene and the make-up a very poorly done zombie movie, not as bad as the likes of the recent SyFy Zombie Night and Vampegeddon but there is very little good here. 2/10 Bethany Cox
Claudio Carvalho
After killing four persons in his home with a shotgun, Dee Travis (Brandon Stacy) claims that he had accidentally ingested an experimental biotoxin that the company Blackthorn where he worked was researching. Travis is sent visibly ill to the Harwood Maximum Security Prison and the Security Officer Sweeny (Chriss Anglin) sends the inmate to the infirmary. Meanwhile the CDC Agent Samantha Beckett (Bay Bruner) comes to the prison to interview Travis and is received by Warden Mahler (Bobby James). While they are having a conversation, they are informed that Travis has been transferred to the solitary confinement and his infected blood has caused an outbreak among the prisoners and guards. Samantha calls the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the responsible advises the warden that the prison is in quarantine. The gore "Dead Men Walking" is a zombie movie underrated in IMDb. I have just watched this low-budget movie with the lowest expectation based on the 3.1 User Rating and in the end I found it a flawed but enjoyable feature. The story has many flaws, like for example, how could Travis be only affected by the virus in the prison? The "shotgun killer" killed four people; then he certainly went to the court for the judgment of his crime. Therefore, months (or even years) have passed until he was sent to prison. Even if he was sent directly to prison to wait for the trial, how long have passed for the manifestation of the effect of the virus? Further, he claimed that he had contaminated his friends and none of them was sent to an autopsy to prove his words. Samantha tells that they are in quarantine and if anybody including the warden's son leave Harwood, it would be "hell on Earth". However, she spends half the movie trying to escape with Johnny. The FEMA authority tells that the prison is in quarantine. However, there are only two snipes eliminating any escapee instead of the building under siege by the police. The reverend that believes in God committing a capital sin with his suicide is also weird. I could list many other flaws in the story, but these examples are the worst. Another bad point is the cinematography, too dark and greenish and the camera work with unusual angles and edition. Last but not the least, there are many bad acting among the unknown cast. There are stupid lines but there are some very witty and funny. The good points are the gruesome make-up and special effects that do not spare children. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Os Mortos Estão Vivos" ("The Dead Are Alive")
lastliberal
I wouldn't either if I was laying on top of Bernadette Perez. There just wasn't anything going on that was more important at the time. I can't wait to see her again in Werewolf in a Women's Prison.But you are not here for that. What about the movie? It seems to be a remake of Dawn of the Dead/Night of the Living Dead, except this time in a prison, where they hid someone who was infected. The whole prison goes down, including the favorites. Now, that is just a crying shame, as you have to root for Perez, Bay Bruner, and the cat-burglar. No tears for the dude who's "top of the food chain."Maximum vomiting and entrails all over the place. If you like blood, you'll love this one.
frankfob
A group of prison guards and inmates band together to fight off an attack by cannibalistic zombies. Sloppily made, atrociously acted, badly written, ineptly directed, poorly shot ripoff of "Night of the Living Dead", made on a bigger budget than that film but with smaller talents. The photography during most of the film is so dark and/or washed out that even the colorized version of "NOTLD" looks better. The editing during the final zombie rampage will give you a headache (cuts last maybe a second or two and often go directly to black before zooming to the next cut, which is incredibly distracting), and although there's a lot of blood, gore and ripping out and eating of various body parts, it's so over the top and badly done it winds up being annoying more than anything else. As previous posters have mentioned, the low budget (e.g., the prison guards' uniforms sport "Security Officer"--rent-a-cop--patches, probably because the producers couldn't get or afford to make real prison guard patches), poor special effects (when the guards fire shotguns or large-caliber automatics it sounds more like small, weak firecrackers going off, and often the sound of gunfire is heard but you can't see any muzzle flashes from the weapons being "fired") and continuity and factual errors (several guards blast away at the zombies with shotguns six or seven times in a row without reloading after each shot) help to sink this almost as much as the stilted direction and bargain-basement acting. Worth a look maybe for the last 15 minutes or so, but it's really nothing you haven't seen done before and done better, and you can see the ending coming a mile away. Overall, a poor effort in pretty much all departments.
