Wednesday, October 5, 2016

#4 - Zoombies (2015)

Okay, tough choices lead to bad decisions, I always say, and that's why tonight's movie review is Zoombies!  And no, it's not about undead robotic vacuum cleaners, but that would be AWESOME.

Zoombies (2015) is actually about a zoo full of endangered animal species that is about to open to the public, but has a small technical glitch to overcome first.  Like, a virus that infects a bunch of monkeys and turns them into zombies.  Or...  Zoombies.  Yep, animal zombies.  Enter a new group of interns arriving at the zoo to start their first day!  Oh, man.  Why did I pick today to quit sniffing glue?

Zoombies is another Asylum production, which I did not know until I started viewing the flick, but hey, I suppose I should have guessed that much.  Why did I pick Zoombies?  The first two flicks I tried to watch bored me to tears in the first 30 seconds, and my very first choice never made it past the stage where I was reading the synopsis and it said FOUND FOOTAGE.  Yikes.  So, we got stuck with Zoombies, and goddammit, if you don't want to watch it, then don't head over to Netflix and cue it up, okay?  Nobody is forcing you!  You'll never get those two hours back!

Zoombies actually wasn't that bad.  There's a good opening scene that lets you know all hell is about to break loose, but it's on hold until we meet all the characters, which is fine.  Then there's some cutesie-pootsie fartgobble (totally just made that word up) about how the curator's little girl was raised with a soon-to-be-extinct Cross-River gorilla, and everyone is all "Awwww, what a sweet, loveable GIGANTIC KILLER APE WITH HUMONGOUS FANGS!  ISN'T HE CUTE?"  Yea.  And when I was a kid, the killer whales at SeaWorld licked the glass trying to taste me.  Probably because I looked like a baby seal.  Everyone thought it was cute then, too.  And then...  ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE!  Or, I grew up.  Look, we all know how this ends.  Everything that's cute, turns into a hell-spewing, human-munching monster-demon by the end of the movie.  Come on, Sheeple!  "The Trouble with Tribbles!"  Remember your Star Trek!  Nothing cute is good for you!  Take me as a prime example.  I used to be cute when I was a kid, and look how I turned out!  I FRIGHTEN CLOWNS!!!

So, once the cutesie-pootsie fartgobble is out of the way, the zoo security team make their way over to where the infected zombie monkeys are, and, well, you can guess what happens next.  Yep.  All hell breaks loose.  I told you it was going to, and you didn't believe me, did you?  (sighs and shakes his head)  They never believe me.  I feel like that old guy at the beginning of the friday the 13th movies who tries to warn people to stay away from Camp Blood.  Nobody ever believes me, and everyone dies at the end.  Why does no one ever listen?  Could be the bloody, dismembered eyes I brandish towards the 3-D camera.  Hmmmm.  Might have to change my choice of props.

So, what's good about Zoombies?  Not a bad looking cast, they seem to have tried to act well.  No acting veterans or known actors, and the dialogue isn't exactly spectacular, but it is almost all action.  There's a couple reasonably cute babes among the new interns, one of whom actually survives longer than 7 minutes!  Look, it's a proven fact, hot chicks do not survive a horror movie more than 7 minutes after their first scene.  Look it up!  No, don't.  I totally made that fact up.  Sorry, I wanted to see what it was like to be Donald Trump for a second, and I didn't have the orange hair or small hands, so I did my best.  Anywho, the plot of Zoombies! is reasonably coherent, there's a typical mix of idiots and smart folks, and it's pretty much all action from beginning to end, with no sleepy parts in between.

What's bad about Zoombies?  Well, apart from no nudity, too much bad CGI.  Starts with the monkeys in the lab and just gets worse.  Kifo, the cross-river gorilla (what the hell is a cross-river gorilla, anyway?) is originally played by a guy in a gorilla suit (who looks like he's wearing jeans at one point), who turns into full-on CGI once he's infected.  Maybe that's what the virus does!  Infects animals and actors, and turns them into bad CGI!  Oh, shit!  We can call it the Max Headroom virus!  :-o

Would I watch Zoombies again?  Nah, probably not.  It's like a mix between Jurassic Park and the Zoo TV series based on James Patterson's book.  Zoombies wasn't bad the first time, but doesn't hold any surprises for you, once you've seen it.

In other news, I'm still working my way through Luke Cage.  Still nothing really surprising.  Everyone's a stereotype.  Maybe "Luke Cage, season two" will actually have him doing something in this decade, and preferably feature a noticeable absence of the N-word.  Seriously, do we need to be hearing it that much?  I doubt it.  Hey, I'm not exactly politically correct myself, but damn.  This isn't the 70's anymore, am I right?  It's like watching Roots, only instead of the main character saying his name is Kunta Kinte, it's Luke screaming that his name is Luke Cage.  Hmmm.  Other than that minor difference, the two shows seem surprisingly similar.  Only, Luke Cage is 13 hours, and I think Roots was closer to 8.  And there's slightly less whipping.

There was a VP debate on TV tonight that I didn't bother to watch, which pre-empted Agents of SHIELD.  Look, I am all for introducing lying strangers to the farmer's daughter on national television, but do you have to broadcast it over my favorite shows?  Nobody really wants to see that shit, and you media types are just blasting it all over the airwaves because you think we want to see it.  No.  We really don't.  There's a reason nobody knows the names of the VPs in this presidential race, and that's because we DON'T FREAKIN CARE.  We wouldn't know the names of the presidential candidates either, but you've been screaming their names on every goddamned channel since 2014.  And we still don't care!  You think we want to watch this shit-show?  We'll have to live through the goddamn thing once one of them gets elected, and you know what?  We still won't know their goddamn names, because we still won't freakin care!  Jesus!  Stop taking off my programs, and let me keep on pretending all hell isn't about to break loose!  GRRAAAAHHHH!  People drive me nuts.  It's like a bad horror movie, only Donald is the scary clown and Hillary is the impure sorority sister who chops off his head at the end.  Come to think of it, I might actually watch the debates, if I thought that might actually happen.  At least it wouldn't be so damn boring.  Ugh.  Politics.  Makes me want to puke.

That's all for tonight.  Til tomorrow night, then, when I'll hopefully manage to finish my post before midnight.  It makes it look like I'm running a day late with my reviews, and it's really only a few moments.  Oh, wells.

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