Rise of the Dead (2007)

Let's be realistic.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Laura is a waitress in a small town in Ohio. It's not bad enough that she's in a dead end job with no advancement prospects. One night a local man, a respected attorney, goes mad and attacks her.With the passage of time the attacks against Laura and her friends and family increase in frequency and intensity. Finally she learns the cause of these attacks: the child she gave up for adoption died in a tragic accident, and his vengeful spirit won't rest until his revenge is complete.OK. Awesome concept. Lots of promise. The Ohio locations are new to our eyes. So what went wrong?The script is, to be generous, untidy. And the direction simply cannot rise to the occasion. Scenes that should have been terrifying are simply puzzling. And the ending, with Laura pregnant and preparing to give birth again- presumably this time she'll keep the child, so he won't grow up to be a demon- is simply dumbfounding. Not profound, just profoundly dumb and anticlimactic.In a better world this screenplay would have fallen into the hands of a director like John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper who could reshape the story and bring coherence and a sense of menace. They could have used the same cast- I'm one of those nuts who thinks that with a strong strict an effective director can get a good performance out of almost anyone- and same locations. I'd be content seeing it remade on an equally small budget.The people behind the camera are far from untalented. Unfortunately, they simply bit off way more than they could chew. But I do commend them for making a workmanlike effort.

Rise of the Dead is set in the small town of Dudley in Ohio where Laura Childs (Erin Wilk) works as a waitress, while walking home by herself one night Laura is attacked by respectable lawyer Sam Fulton (Jason Madera) but Laura's boyfriend Jack Walther (Stephen Seidel) manages to save her by running Sam over. Laura is shaken but not badly hurt although she has no idea why Sam would try to kill her, a question that local Sheriff Brown (Peter Blitzer) has the task of answering. Then soon after Laura's best friend & house-mate Amber (Jaime Whitlock) also tries to kill her without any sort of reason & again Jack comes to Laura's rescue & in a struggle Amber is stabbed & killed. Something definitely is going on, Laura discovers that a woman named Sally Sherman (Brooke Delaney) killed her husband & that they had both adopted Laura's baby & that the common link is Laura & her baby which she gave up. Laura becomes convinced that her baby has been possessing people in order to kill those responsible for it's misery & ultimate death...Directed by William Wedig this was originally filmed under the title Tantrum which was then changed to the more horror sounding Rise of the Dead when brought by the company that eventually released it, the title Rise of the Dead gives the impression that this will be some sort of apocalyptic zombie film in the vein of one of George A. Romero's efforts but Rise of the Dead is in fact much more low key than that & is more of a supernatural ghost story as much a flesh eating zombie film. To be fair to Rise of the Dead it only lasts 72 minutes (including opening & closing credits) so at least it's short, unfortunately that's pretty much where the positives end. The story is an audacious one, the dead spirit of a young child starts possessing people in order to kill those that let him down & led to his untimely death by handgun, for some strange reason Laura is the only person in the town of Dudley who can defend herself since no-one else the kid goes after puts up any sort of fight whatsoever & while I was sat there watching this I was wondering to myself why doesn't it just possess Laura & then make her commit suicide? There are no rules, the kid seems able to possess anyone whenever it wants for no apparent reason, no explanation is ever given & the ending has to be seen to be believed. In order to stop the kid no killing her while in her boyfriend Jack's body & therefore not having to kill him Laura seduces her kid & has sex with him which leads to a so-called twist ending where laura is seen to be pregnant, I didn't know whether to laugh or be repulsed to be honest. With such a short duration there's no time to flesh the story out & all of the character's really are very basic one dimensional nobodies that leave no impact, the story is nothing more than random incidents strung together & the lack of any zombie action will surely disappoint many.Obviously shot on an ultra low budget Rise of the Dead looks like it was, the video camcorder look, the drab colours, the lifeless cinematography & basic music. All the locations seem to be people's house's & the special effects are no more elaborate than a bit of fake blood splashed around. There are no special effects to speak of, no CGI or traditional effects work. There's no tension or atmosphere, the script never sets up any rules or limits & as such everything feels rather random.Apparently filmed in Ohio & Connecticut the production values are rock bottom. The acting isn't much better from a cast of unknown's, what else can I say?Rise of the Dead had the potential to be a decent supernatural possession revenge horror exploitation flick but isn't, it's bad in every aspect. Do yourself a favour & give this one a miss.

This movie is pretty disappointing. I gave it a 4 star just because it was funny when it wasn't really supposed to be. I barely gave it a 4 star considering I thought I was going to watch a zombie movie, not a movie about some women who seems to be chased by people who are getting possessed by her dead son. It was mostly funny due to the sub-par acting, the obvious plot motifs (ie. a girl getting naked and promptly murdered with her breasts out) and corny death scenes. Most of the death scenes were nowhere near realistic, and there was some blur effect they did with a few of the possessed that came off really cheesy. There was also some white balance issues I noticed really early in the movie. I also found the end of the movie to be rather confusing, and sorta disturbing. It appeared like she was having sex with her boyfriend at the end, while he was possessed with her child. Not only that but she was talking to him as if he was her child while they were having sex, strange, I'm sure Freud would have a few things to say about that. Regardless, I didn't understand that at all, ha ha it totally was a "wtf" moment for me. All in all, It was a decent effort but I can't find it in myself to give it anything more than a 4 star mostly because: 1.) I was upset about how I seemed to be deceived by the title and 2.) It came across as INCREDIBLY LOW BUDGET which, even if it is, you should try to avoid that in my opinion (I mean 28 days later was made on a really low budget also, but that was amazing).

I just finished listening to the commentary on this (non-zombie but rather spirit/ghost possession) small little film and I have to say that this thing is quite a freaking achievement! With a total budget of 20 thousand dollars and a crew willing to work basically for free they were able to make this movie, which not only cuts together, it looks completely professional! And has lots of death and murder! Not necessarily some of the best scenes I've ever seen from a horror film but damn: This thing is glossy! It even has a super creepy, twisted and completely original ending (which you'll just have to watch to find out what I mean). In any case, it's creepy and weird but makes total sense for the story (the first kill is specially good and creepy and if anything this scene and the last one make this movie worth watching. There's also a good scene in a church where a women gets her head crushed with a statue of the virgin mary. It's messed up.).I don't know how many of you out there actually are indie filmmakers yourself but I've had friends who have made 20 thousand dollar films before and they are usually just un-watchably bad. Bad sound, bad acting and bad cuts tend to plague these super-low budget films but this one seemed to gloss over and past those issues to deliver a very watchable, coherent and driven story. Say what you want about the film sucking, being boring, poor production value or whatever other problems the film may have, but don't take for granted that most movies you see are shot for well over 2,000 times this budget (and that's only a 40 million dollar movie, not the giant $150 million dollar movie that blockbuster's like Transformers cost).I'd recommend this film to anybody who's interested in independent cinema (the film was independently produced with the name Tantrum, which I think suits the film way better, and then sold to Lions Gate for distribution), anybody who's interested in seeing new ideas and scenes in the horror genre and anybody who likes a good old fashioned horror flick complete with all the elements to make for an extremely entertaining Saturday night.