The Horror Show
Anger of The Dead
by Francesco Picone
I have learned that these days, when I come across a movie that has the words “of the dead” in the title, I should probably stay away from it. There are exceptions, of course. Most, if not all, Romero zombie films are out of this world fabulous, and then there’s the excellent 2004 Dawn of The Dead remake. Unfortunately, there are far too many filmmakers that feel if you slap the words “of the dead” on the title that you’ll get an instant hit. I get the point of wanting to ensure people are aware the film is about zombies, but as I’ve said time and again, the zombie genre is saturated, so we don’t need title saturation too.
Anger of The Dead (also known as Age of The Dead) is one of those films that falls somewhere in between good and bad, it’s more forgettable than anything else and didn’t bring anything new to the zombie table, but I was able to make it through the whole movie in one sitting. If you can get past the first painful few minutes of the film, I think it’s something to help pass the time on a boring evening or just worth the background noise on the television while you multitask.
I say that the first few minutes are painful because of some poor choices made by the team working on the film. Alice, our main character, is introduced immediately. She is home with her daughter and receives a frightening call from her husband who is in the city. He tells Alice not to leave the house and not to let anyone in the apartment. Naturally their daughter lets in a zombie and soon falls victim to the undead. Alice’s reaction to her daughter’s death was just terrible. I can’t place blame entirely on Roberta Sparta because later on in the film she shows that she’s a capable actress, but the opening scenes here were cringe worthy to say the least. Alice then ventures out and runs into fellow survivor Stephen who convinces her to join him in searching for safety. She makes mention of her husband once and then it was as if she just went “meh, husband who?” and joined this random stranger who she soon after hooks up with.
After the initial flash forward sequence and we get all caught up, we see that Alice and Stephen are not alone in the apocalypse. We’re introduced to a forgettable third wheel in their party as well as an entirely different set of characters in a totally separate storyline from the main. This was, again, a part where the film almost lost me, but I stuck with it because I hate not finishing things. The second set of characters are the antagonists, led by bad-guy Rooker. Rooker was a nice addition to the cast and brought a bit of humor to the film. Unfortunately he was a cardboard cutout villain and reminded me a lot of Negan from The Walking Dead. In fact, several things, in my opinion, were reminiscent of The Walking Dead.
The separate storylines finally intertwine but of course there wasn’t any sort of explanation and the stories should have really been fleshed out more. We’re given an ambiguous ending that fits well with the ambiguous setting that we’re given throughout the film. The editing could have been better but the effects were executed nicely.
All in all Anger/Age of The Dead was not a terrible film, but quite forgettable. Even as I was writing this review I found myself struggling to remember bits and pieces about the film because there was never a part where anything snatched my attention and held it throughout.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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