What’s an Undead Ringer?

I review zombie movies for the ZRC. Sometimes people, for whatever reason, don’t want to come right out and peg their movie as a zombie flick. Maybe it’s artistic integrity or they just don’t want to be dismissed by being lumped in with such a stigmatized genre, so sometimes you have to read between the lines.  Every now and again, I come across one that looks like it’s totally a zombie movie, but they don’t want to use the ‘Z’ word, so they call them ‘the dead’ or talk about an ‘outbreak’ or ‘cannibalistic creatures’. Sometimes they use these terms to try to sucker YOU, the zombie fan, into picking up their flick, knowing full well it’s about ghosts or lame-ass monsters. By and large, these movies aren’t very good, so to add insult to injury, you’ve just rented a really bad movie that’s not even the zombie movie you hoped for. Well, I’ve been suckered on occasion and I’ll admit it so you don’t have to. We’ll call them Undead Ringers. I’ll review them, discuss them and, yes, spoil the hell out of them, all out of spite for being fished-in. This is the only SPOILER ALERT you get. Now on to:

I got this one through Netflix. It was lumped in under their zombie sub-genre list. Here’s how they described it:

“Deep in an underground research facility, a band of scientists and soldiers awakens with no memory of how they got there. An escape tunnel is their only way out, but vicious mutants hungry for human blood stand in their way. Will the survivors live long enough to regain their memories and discover the truth?”

I’ve never before, in my history as a reviewer for this site, turned off a movie halfway through because it was so bad. There’s a first time for everything. Shadow Walkers was that first time for me.

The premise of Shadow Walkers is this: This research facility was trying to genetically create the perfect soldier (been there). When it started to go wrong, they sent in a strike team to weld all the doors shut, gas the people inside so they don’t remember anything (what kind of gas does that?) and let loose the beasts that they created to kill all the people inside. The opening sequence shows this happening. You see all these people getting killed by this unseen terrifying force; dragged screaming into the darkness, cowering in fear behind there own hands as the creature come to get them. Person after person dispatched with the greatest of ease and by the most vicious means. Yet, halfway through the movie, the main character has a kung fu fight with one of them. The thing has these razor sharp teeth and inch long claws and it’s there putting up it’s dukes rather than just charging and mauling like the beast you were lead to believe they were from the opening sequence.

The characters start to remember things at the most convenient times, even though they’ve been thoroughly exposed to the forgetting gas. This is one of the dumbest things about the movie. This handful of people that have survived the initial attack of these vicious, kung fu-sparring monsters, have this gas induced amnesia and they keep guessing that they hate each other and all this crap about hating their jobs and stuff. One of the guys had a gas mask on so he wasn’t affected by the forgetting gas and he’s all messing with their minds and being all coy, but it’s all banal and stupid crap.

What made the good folks at Netflix think this was a zombie movie is the fact that the monsters transfer the virus to their victims by biting them. When they’re bitten, they turn into these cannibalistic, flesh-hungry monsters that growl and scowl and are, for some reason, sensitive to light.

The special effects make-up is the worst. It would be really good at a Halloween party, but in a bona fide movie, it’s complete crap. Check this out. This is the big bad monster. And it looks this ridiculous on screen too. This is what the virus the folks created can turn you into if you get bitten. It looks like something out of a campy, 1950’s sci-fi B-movie.

If I didn’t remark on the acting it’s because the acting is remarkably bad. It’s not I-don’t-know-how-to-act/dead-pan-bad, it’s I-think-I-know-how-to-act-because-I’ve-seen-it-on-TV bad. Overacting for little things; under-acting for big things; it’s just bad acting.

At every turn watching this movie I was rolling my eyes. When I finally figured out that there were going to be no zombies, I was just pissed off. This movie is a complete waste of time and space.

Avoid.

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to our  RSS feed!     Bookmark to: