Evil is an intense ride through a zombie outbreak in Greece that only stops to have long drawn out hand-to-hand combat scenes against the rabid undead. The movie starts as three construction workers are attacks in an inadvertently found cave by an unseen evil. Later that night, unaware of the attack or how they got out of the cave, the three workers turn into rabid, flesh hungry zombies and attack everyone in their respective surroundings; one at a night club, one at a soccer game and one at home with his family. From there, the movie follows a few survivors of the attacks as they meet more survivors and try to make it out of the city.

As I mentioned before, it’s pretty fast paced movie, until they have actual contact witht he zombies. This where they have these detailed and rather ill-choreographed fight scenes that are rife with gore and close-ups of it. This being the worst part of the movie, it is still ahead of the game because these scenes still aren’t that bad.

The special effects and gore are top shelf. You can clearly see people’s guts being ripped out, limbs torn off and heads splattering open from gun shots. the special effects team did a fantastic job of it. The zombie were awesome looking. They didn’t have any gimmicky make-up, they were just rabid, walking, bloody and fucked up dead people, but they looked great.

This movie borrowed a little bit from movies like 28 Days Later, but for the most part was very original and a very enjoyable watch. I highly recommend that zombie fans check this one out.

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We just found out recently that one of our fellow bloggers Adam, from the blog Neurotrash, passed away last December. While we didn’t know him personally, he was involved here as a reader and commenter (who we occasionally butted heads with, but is this really anything new to the internet?). So, condolences to his family, friends and readers…

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The Official Website for George A. Romero’s Diary Of The Dead on MySpace.com now has an advance listing of theaters across the U.S. that have confirmed that they will be showing Diary Of The Dead upon its release on February 15th, 2008. The list will be updated when new theaters confirm showings, so check back frequently for theaters near you!

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Check out the trailer for the upcoming zombie film 2, from Emptyhouse Films. Most of the zombies in the trailer look pretty good, and I’m interested to find out what’s up with the nose-less talking zombie (“You’re not listening, David!”). I’ll definitely check this out when it’s released. Read an interview with 2 filmmaker Andy Davis over at Revenant and watch the trailer for yourself:

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Eating Steve: A Love Storyis a new zombie graphic novel by J. Mark Schmidt which a charming story of life, despair, and zombie-ism and is currently available from SLG Publishers, who have a fantastic four page excerpt up on their site. The best part is, it’s under $6.00 for 76 pages! Sounds pretty fantastic and been getting great reviews.

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This movie takes place in the present day which is 80 some years after a zombie outbreak that has devastated the US. The west has to be won again. The president is paying a bounty on zombie pinkies. It is the story of one such bounty hunter, Ryn Baskin, that this movie follows. In the beginning, Ryn is double crossed by his chum dealer who sells him out to a bunch of competing bounty hunters. He’s left for dead and his bag of pinkies is stolen. When he wakes up, because he is somehow immune to the zombie virus, he begins his chase across the west after the gang that stole his bounty. Along the way you discover that the leader of the bad gang is trying to infect towns with the zombie virus so he can collect the bounty for himself.

The movie sounds pretty cool when you think of mixing the western genre with the zombie genre, but it’s not. It’s an hour and half of trite scenes from both genres. The lead seems like he’s trying get you to say “Clint Eastwood!” in a game of Charades and doing a really ham-fisted job of it.

The zombies are pretty crappy looking, especially when there are a lot of them together. It’s as if they put a flier up on their church bulletin board for zombie casting and hired all 12 people that showed up. The make-up looked like $2 Halloween grease paint.

I thought the lighting, editing and camera work was top shelf. Honestly, I was really impressed with the lighting. The people that did that should go on to make better movies without the people that wrote, acted and cast this movie. And if they were the same people that did those jobs (there was a lot of double duty in the credits) they should finds their strengths and use them properly.

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The Walking Dead, Image’s popular zombie comic series, is approaching it’s 50th issue. Just to celebrate, Image is releasing a 1 out of every 25 variant superhero cover with art by Savage Dragon‘s Erik Larsen and Invincible‘s Ryan Ottley. Originally set to be a 1 out of every 100 variant cover Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman decided to up the frequency due to the high level of demand.

“My original intention was to make this a super-rare, limited thing, since the cover itself is so misleading as to what the book actually is. I didn’t want people to be confused and think I’d changed the book drastically. Although, based off feedback I’ve decided to make it much more accessible,” said Kirkman. “I hope those readers and retailers excited for the cover enjoy it as much as I do.”

The Walking Dead 50th issue is due out April 23rd for only $2.99. To see the full article, visit the Image Comics website’s New section or click here.

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Creative and Editorial Director of Weird Tales magazine Stephan Segal e-mailed to let us know that Weird Tales would be giving a this one-of-a-kind book to the winner of the Miss Zombie Beauty 2008 at the Phoenix ComicCon. Zombie Love is a handmade book lovingly crafted by Patrica Lee of BookWyrms Art. It compiles two zombie stories from Weird Tales into this amazing tome that looks like something out of a Harry Potter movie. More pictures below:

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A few weeks ago my friend George invited me over to play Dead Rising. I brought the beer and George supplied the use of his XBox 360 and nice big TV.

Dead Rising follows photojournalist Frank West as he investigates a zombie outbreak. It starts out with you (playing as Frank) on a helicopter ride into the center of the outbreak. The pilot flies around and your job is to take pictures of the scene. There is almost too much to see with all riots, car crashes, and zombie attacks going on, but the game gives you the freedom to zoom in and take pictures of whatever you want. It employs a unique rating system that judges your pictures on the amount of drama and gore in the composition. After playing this section of the game a few times, I was able to anticipate the events that occur and get some cool shots of people falling off buildings and gas stations explosions. This introduction served as a brilliant way of setting the mood – you are quite literally flying into the middle of hell.

The helicopter lands on the roof of a shopping mall (ala’ Dawn of the Dead) and the pilot takes off, leaving Frank for few days before coming back to take him home. Frank’s job is to uncover the mystery surrounding the outbreak in time to be picked up again. There are other humans trapped in the mall as well, each with their own story. Many times they will find themselves surrounded by zombies and you are given the option of trying to lead them back to safety or leaving them to fend for themselves.

Much like Grand Theft Auto, you are given a sprawling “sandbox” environment and there are thousands of ways to interact with it. The highlight of the game is being able to fight zombies using whatever is at hand. You’ll find firearms in some locations, but just about anything in the game can be used as a weapon. You can swing around a lead pipe, throw a cement planter at the zombies, or even run around with a large market umbrella and push them out of your way. At one point we found that you could smash the gumball machines which would cause the candy to spill out like marbles, causing the zombies to slip and fall. This creates an immersive environment that really puts you in the shoes of the main character.

While exploring the mall is fun, you are on a race against time if you hope to finish the goals given to you. The entire game runs on a clock and many tasks must be completed on schedule. For example, a character may have some information for you and wants to meet in the food court, and you have a four hour window to get there and meet him. While it does work to move the story along, it can be frustrating at times when you have too many tasks and not enough time.

One of the main aggravations of game are the save points. Every time you die you have to start again from your last save. Each save point is located in the restrooms of the mall, which are few and far between. Worse still, if you are running low on health and save the game, it may take you several attempts to go from the save point to an area to recover your health. When this happens it’s irritating, repetitive, and just plain no fun.

When all is said and done, exploring the game and finding new ways to kill zombies is the meat and potatoes of the game. We had a blast running around dressed in children’s clothing with a pony mask on (you can change your outfit at the clothing stores in the mall) fighting zombies with the chainsaw. Who cares about the story when you can live out your Dawn of the Dead fantasies?

Overall, Dead Rising is an enjoyable game and probably the closest you’ll ever come to a “real” zombie apocalypse. The developers really created a polished experience that you’ll want to play over and over again.

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A comet streaks by earth bringing with it a zombie plague. A group of survivors hold up in an old microwave tower that they assume has been abandoned by NORAD. Tensions flair among the many different people trying to ride out the end of the world here, especially over the fate of a main character who’s bitten in the very beginning of the movie. Certain discoveries are made by way of a little medical knowledge and a whole lot of suspension of disbelief. Regardless, the zombies aren’t the only problem in this bunker; fundamentalist christians, gun-toting, head-strong bigots, jealous boyfriends and alien life forms are just the beginning of the wrinkles in this little survivor colony.

Obviously working on a low budget, this crew was able to assemble an original, intriguing and entertaining watch. Some of the acting is a little sub-par, but still didn’t get in the way of me enjoying this movie. The story was original, more than just your average low-budget zombie flick full of gore and moaning, though there was plenty of blood and guts.

The zombies were fairly well done. Your basic freshly dead, freshly fed (i.e. bloody as hell) paled out people, but very convincing and nothing cheesy…well the one that kept hissing at it’s attacker could have taken a class or something, but otherwise real good.

The blood and gore was pretty cool and plentiful. The special effects team did a good job for the most part. The least part being the wiggly rubber alien.

All in all, I enjoyed this movie for what it was, a low budget zombie flick with plenty of guts and a story that kept me interested. You could do worse than to rent Days of Darkness.

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