Virus-created zombies? Check. Quarantined section of a near-future city? Check. Political/corporate conspiracy? Check.
About the only surprise about this gore-splashed cinematic offshoot of beloved chop-and-bludgeon video game franchise Dead Rising, really, is how watchable it ends up being.
Jesse Metcalfe is Chase Carter, an online reporter whose ambition leads him behind the wall, and into a semi-quarantined section of a large American city populated mostly by folks bitten by zombies but kept human by a medication called — wait for it — Zombrex. Suddenly, the Zombrex stops working, and Carter becomes trapped among zombies and apocalyptic bikers (of course!). He bands together with a tough girl (Megahn Ory) whose personal street-sourced supply of Zombrex seems to still be keeping her toothier tendencies at bay, and a grieving mother (an underused Virginia Madsen) whose recent tragedy has caused her connection to reality to become, erm, let's say "tenuous."
Cue the national hysteria, the military intervention, etc., as Carter's crew races against time — aided by Carter's intrepid camerawoman Jordan (the always-interesting Keegan Connor Tracy) on the outside and bumpered by hokey "live" news broadcasts featuring a gleefully scenery-chewing Rob Riggle as the original game's "hero" Frank West — to not only survive, but also uncover the nefarious plot underlying the outbreak.
You know the drill. So does everybody involved with this enterprise, and they go with it. Like most contemporary zombie flicks, Dead Rising is more action than horror; there's nothing remotely scary going on, just buckets of blood and entrails. It's all in good, violent fun, though, and produced better than 90% of game-inspired movies. (Extra kudos to Metcalfe in particular for committing and giving a bit of life to what's basically a wafer-thin character sketch.) The news bumpers are occasionally excruciating, and things get unintentionally silly when Dead Rising tries too hard to communicate its Big Ideas about xenophobia, relationships and the media — when you've got a zombie clown with a battle axe running amok in your story, you should try to keep the Big Ideas to a minimum — but it's definitely worth a late-night viewing for genre heads sick of the classics and looking for something a little better than the average SyFy fare.
3 out of 5 Stars
Not rated. Directed by Zach Lipovsky
Starring Jesse Metcalfe, Meghan Ory, Virginia Madsen, Rob Riggle
Out on DVD and Digital HD
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2015.