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31%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #9,757
...out of 20,906 movies
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In the sleepy small town of Dudley, Ohio, a terrifying future awaits. Laura Childs is under attack by the undead, and not even those closest to her can save her from the evil forces at hand.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: November 18, 2007
There are a handful of reviews for Rise of the Dead floating around out there which are - shall we say - less than positive, and the asshole in me can sort of agree with them. You see, this film was horribly mispromoted, and although I'm not sure whether to blame that entirely on Lions Gate or on the filmmakers, it did leave me a little disappointed when I realized that it had absolutely nothing to do with zombies. Really, was it so wrong for me to expect some mindless zombie action from a film with a DVD cover like the one shown on this page, a title like Rise of the Dead, and a description that promises that the running time is "full of brain-munching, organ-slurping fun"? I certainly don't think so, and again, I could have been an asshole and slammed this film based on the false representation alone, but I sat through it and watched it for what it was in order to show some sort of professionalism on this site. Thankfully, I didn't regret that decision.
Laura (Erin Wilk) is the leading lady for this one, and right from the start, she finds herself being attacked by a random stranger in an alleyway for no apparent reason. Luckily for her, her boyfriend Jack (Stephen Seidel) is around to help, and by help, I mean that he runs the guy over with his van and kills him. This leads to the two being investigated by the resident "super cop" in Deputy Greer (Chris Ferry), a man who makes a startling revelation: the strange guy that they killed was a well-respected lawyer who really had no sort of motivation for attacking them. This makes for one hell of a strange case, and when somebody else attacks Laura (and winds up dead), the police start to get more than a little suspicious of the happy couple. We at home eventually discover that secrets from this young woman's past have come back to haunt her, and we have ourselves a decent little supernatural horror.
Once again, this is as far from a zombie film as you can get: the people that attack Laura aren't even dead (they're possessed) and there is no brain-munching or organ-slurping (in fact, there's very little gore whatsoever). In the filmmakers' defense, I will say that Lions Gate is notorious for doing this sort of thing with their direct-to-video releases, so I'm just going to assume that that was the case here. This doesn't make the practice acceptable, mind you, but with no inside knowledge of the situation, I can't very well blame the filmmakers or the film itself for what was most likely the distributor's doing.
So, with that out of the way, let's just take a look at the film for what it was and not what it was marketed as, shall we? Rise of the Dead is more of a supernatural horror - maybe even a supernatural thriller - than anything, and there are two main plot points of the film. First and foremost is the obvious "why is this happening?" question, and once that is answered, the question becomes "how can we stop this?" I don't want to spoil either part of the movie, but I will say that it was a surprisingly creative twist that hasn't been done very often in American films. A certain Thai film tackled this subject a while back with great results, but as far as American films... I don't think it's been done very often if at all.
I'll also say that this film will likely please those of you who are looking for an entertaining supernatural horror film, but this praise comes with a bit of a disclaimer: Rise of the Dead is not a particularly polished film and does feature some of the mistakes common of a first-time director. There are certain scenes which really don't go anywhere, and - even at a scant seventy minutes - the running time feels padded in spots due to certain pieces of the storyline being reiterated for the slower members of the audience. This doesn't make it a horrible movie, but it certainly doesn't help matters either.
On the positive side of things, I felt that the performances found here were surprisingly great for a low budget film. Erin Wilk is perfect in the leading role, and this little lady really carries the film with her convincing performance. Chris Ferry is hilarious in his minor role as the small town deputy with a huge ego, and I was also particularly fond of Emily Ackerman as... well, let's just say that she's someone who pops up towards the end. This woman only had a single "real" scene and a quick flashback, but she was damned good in them and made me wish that she had gotten a little more time to show off what she could do.
Overall, Rise of the Dead is an entertaining little film. It's not a great film, mind you, and it's certainly not what I expected when I picked it up, but it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. I'm going with an average rating for this one, but I'll also say that fans of supernatural thrillers will likely enjoy this one more than I did. 6/10.
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