Biohazardous DVD Review
In Biohazardous, a small town in New Jersey is up in arms over what Gentech, a genetic research company, is doing there. Amidst local protests and nosy cops, Gentech operates under a strict veil of secrecy behind electrified fences and under 24 hour guard. The story follows a group of teenagers, one of whom is the daughter of the new Gentech night watchmen, who like to party in the woods behind Gentech. There’s also the local priest, who is one of the more vocal activists against Gentech, he’s planning to break into Gentech and stop their heathen experiments with the power of god. All the characters end up inside Gentech while they’re locked down in an effort to squelch a zombie outbreak.
The dialog in this movie is pretty ridiculous and is often delivered with a high school play level of acting. One of the characters attempts to pull off a double agent double-cross, but when delivered so dead-pan and emotionless, it just comes off as confusingly inept. Not all of the actors are terrible, but when there’s two actors on the screen and only one can act, it doesn’t make the experience any better.
For some reason the makers of this film decided they’d drop little homages to zombie film makers of the past, yet they’re done in a very ham-fisted and annoying way. The first thing you are confronted with in the movie in a reporter announcing that his name is George Romero. Then one of the characters makes a request for an air-strike from General Fulci. I was surprised they didn’t repeat “General Lucio Fulci?” These name droppings always come off tacky, especially in this movie.
The zombies in Biohazardous were generally made up to be all gray and white with lots of blood. Even freshly dead characters took on this long dead look. These zombies were also of the slow variety, except for the super zombie which is Biohazardous‘ contribution to zombie lore. As these zombies were made by experimenting for the military to reanimate the dead for everlasting soldiers, the super zombie is a zombie that has been given an extra shot of adrenaline which basically ‘roids him out, makes him walk faster, growl more and requires a few bullets in the head to put him down. This super zombie, when described by the evil mastermind behind it, sounded like it was going to be a real problem for our protagonists. It wasn’t. I think a dude with a chainsaw dispatched the big windbag within minutes of his creation.
It’s not that this movie is all that terrible, it’s just that it’s not very good. The quality of the video and titles set it up for me as a low budget movie, so my hopes weren’t too high from the get go, but it never really went above my expectations. It never surprised me or even made me glad I was watching it.
