{"id":15871,"date":"2015-10-11T00:30:53","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T04:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=15871"},"modified":"2015-10-10T23:19:08","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T03:19:08","slug":"dead-rising-watchtower-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/11\/dead-rising-watchtower-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"deadrising-wt\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I won\u2019t call \u201cDead Rising\u201d the most original zombie movie ever made, but you have to give it to Zach Lipovsky. He makes a movie based around a zombie video game, and delivers big time on zombie carnage. Unlike \u201cResident Evil.\u201d That said, while I wasn\u2019t completely bowled over by the movie adaptation of the hit video game, I did find \u201cDead Rising\u201d to be a surprisingly solid and entertaining zombie romp in the end. Its supply of guts and grue is hefty and it packs a punch with slick direction and some neat casting here and there. The film mixes dark comedy, horror and science fiction surprisingly well, with some good laughs followed by genuine zombie frights that I just dug from beginning to end.<\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t know if the movie had to be almost two hours in length, but it definitely kept my attention from the opening shot right until the closing explosion. I usually find all video game adaptations to be tedious and unsuccessful, but shockingly, \u201cDead Rising\u201d is one of the very rare good ones. It doesn\u2019t just work as an adaptation but as a zombie movie in its own right. Jessie Metcalfe plays Chase West, a news journalist who is on the front line in a Canadian city that\u2019s been overrun by zombies. The few survivors have been kept alive thanks to the medicine Zombrex. When a bad batch infiltrates Quarantine, the dead begin wreaking havoc and now Chase has to figure out how to get back home. Meanwhile, he\u2019s stuck with two other survivors, both of whom have their own goals for this chaos, and he slowly learns that he can get information on the apocalypse for his job, while concocting various weapons to battle the zombies.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t help that a rogue biker gang are outside the doors wreaking their own havoc, while the military are preparing to fire bomb the city in twenty four hours. I don\u2019t know much about the video game, but I know the basic rules about concocting your own weapons and fighting zombies off with normal objects. And the film supplies those nods two fold, showing Chase and co. building their own apparatuses with duct tape and good old fashioned creativity. Director Lipovsky is great at depicting these moments, showing the creation of these weapons as climactic scenes that guarantee a fist pump of excitement. It\u2019s especially cool once Chase decides to step up and fight for his life. Lipovsky\u2019s direction is top notch, depicting a lot of the wasteland as terrifying, while also staging some excellent scenes of zombie carnage.<\/p>\n

The single take of Chase stomping zombies while running from car to car is fantastic, while a character\u2019s final scene involving child zombies was absolutely haunting. As an added bonus, the cast is strong with people like Virginia Madsen, and Dennis Haysbert, all the while Rob Riggle draws the most laughs as character from the first game, Frank West. His interviews interrupt a lot of the momentum, but it\u2019s made up for by Riggle\u2019s hilarious line delivery as a straightforward survivor of the zombie apocalypse who supplies advice and tips for television viewers without censorship. I\u2019m usually very rough on video game adaptations, but \u201cDead Rising\u201d is a surprisingly very good take on the hit video games of the same name. It\u2019s above average zombie cinema with teeth and it\u2019s worth a shot if you\u2019re in the mood for good apocalyptic entertainment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I won\u2019t call \u201cDead Rising\u201d the most original zombie movie ever made, but you have to give it to Zach Lipovsky. He makes a movie based around a zombie video game, and delivers big time on zombie carnage. Unlike \u201cResident Evil.\u201d That said, while I wasn\u2019t completely bowled over by the movie adaptation of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12],"tags":[58,64,249,259,477,906,1012,1087,1219,1221],"class_list":["post-15871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-movie-reviews","tag-action","tag-adaptation","tag-d","tag-dark-comedy","tag-horror","tag-science-fiction","tag-survival","tag-thriller","tag-zombie-apocalypse","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15873,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15871\/revisions\/15873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}