Out of all The Asylum films I’ve watched this one is hands down the worst of them. Oddly enough the Coed and Zombie Stoner might actually be their best work to date. Which is actually not as sad as it sounds, as Coed and Zombie Stoner is a good film. Just not a good horror film. Here, the parts just didn’t click. I go into Asylum films expecting a bad story, worse acting, laughable CGI and to be fun. Sure, they hit the first three dead on. But boy did they miss the mark on the last one.
Zoombies opens at Eden with some Doctors trying to save a Macaque. Going so far as to inject it with an experimental serum. The Monkey dies, but comes back to life changed and attacks the doctors.He’s joined by other Macaque is its infection spreads. But the Doctor is able to seal the room before he overwhelmed. We then cut to as Eden, a wildlife rescue and preserve, that houses many of the worlds most endangered species is about to open to the public as a Zoo. As keeping animals alive is expensive. Eden’s Main Administrator Dr. Ellen Rogers (Kim Nielsen) escorts a number of new interns who are to help man the Zoo to their Instructors/Supervisors. Dr. Rogers also has her daughter Thea (LaLa Nestor) with her as the babysitter is sick. After dropping off all the interns Dr. Rogers heads to the main office with her new intern Gage (Andrew Asper), a straight-laced, fastidious man. She learns of the alarm in the medical area and with no response from first responders she sends her security team led by Rex (Marcus Anderson) to investigate. They’re joined by Gage as a response needs five people and they only have four, leaving Dr. Rogers behind. When they arrive, they find the Doctor’s dead along with the guard that initially responded. The team is quickly beset by the infected Macaque’s, losing the member that wasn’t Lizzy (Ione Butler) and while trying to escape release the infected Macaque’s into the park. Loose in the park the infection quickly spins out of control as every animal they come across becomes infected…
This film is kind of brutal to get through. Not like it’s gory or something of that nature. Zoombies is just boring. Only a few of the characters are any fun, basically the ones I mentioned in the synopsis. Which is sad, because this film as a decently sized cast. But they just boil down to cannon fodder and blatantly so.
That said, those I do mention are really fun. I get the sense they’re having fun, which is great. They also manage to some sell the terrible lines they have to say and it never comes off forced.
The CGI is awful. Just terrible. Which is to be expected, as this is an Asylum production. It wouldn’t be so bad if all the animals weren’t CGI. Because then you could at least get a reprieve. But you don’t and the cheesiness wears off pretty fast. I can understand the reasons, mostly how expensive it would be to get those actual animals for many of the shots. But it needed to be handled differently than it was.
Final thoughts, criminally boring, basically covers it. There’s very little here worth taking about, if anything at all. Zoombies is trying very hard to be So Bad It’s Good and that’s very apparent. Overall Zoombies is forgettable and passable. 3/10
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