Review: Dead Men Walking

Dead Men Walking (prison joke, get it?)
2005
Runtime of 82 minutes

This is by far the best zombie movie I have seen as of late. It’s basically 28 days later (not to be confused with 28 days) set in an American prison. This movie has a fairly sharp script, good acting, good production value, a very attractive female lead and an unnecessary topless woman scene (not the attractive female lead but still nice). The victims of the zombie virus cry blood (which is brilliantly creepy) and spend a great deal of time tearing out people’s intestines. This movie has everything you could ask for in a zombie flick.

Spoilers ahoy:

The movie gets right into it, starting out with a guy fighting off half a dozen zombies with a shotgun. He has a close call with the last one and when he blows its head off blood spatters on his face. He shrieks and wipes it off just as the cops burst in wrestle him to the floor and indifferently force his face into the puddle of blood from one of the zombies as they cuff him. The man is taken to a prison hacking and coughing and shortly there after vomits blood onto several people.

An attractive woman from the C.D.C. shows up to examine this man for evidence of contagion but is unable to conduct an interview because, like most undead, he cares for naught but the sweet taste of human flesh. This predilection predictably gets him shot and our comely protagonist is understandably distraught. The warden summons an inmate who was on the bus to the prison along with the un-dead and now dead-dead disease vector. The warden says: “I know you’ve escaped from every other prison you’ve been in, but that Houdini shit isn’t going to work for you here” or something to that effect and tells him a hot chick from the C.D.C. wants to talk to him.

“Yeah that dude was sick as hell. . . OH GOD DID I CATCH IT?” she assures him that she doesn’t know and sends him on his way. Shortly thereafter he escapes, not by regurgitating a set of lock picks or through some feat of MacGyver-esque ingenuity, but by beating the shit out of the incompetent guard escorting him back to his cell and stealing the keys.

By now the half a dozen guys who had blood vomited on them have gotten sick and projectile vomited on a bunch of other people - sort of like the pie eating scene from Stand By Me. Anyway, the whole lot of them have turned into zombies. The prison is locked down, nobody is allowed in or out and C.D.C. a containment team is called.

Next we witness a conjugal visit between some nameless prisoner and his wife. We’ve never seen him before and will only see him once more, when he and his lover are predictably devoured by the zombie horde. “Did you hear that? It was kind of like the anguished moans of a legion of blood thirsty undead” to which he of course responds “No baby that was probably just the air conditioner. Why don’t you take your top off”. And thus the obligatory topless woman scene, which every horror movie demands. As small bands of guards fight off zombies in their respective cell blocks our protagonist tries to make her way toward the front gate to meet and brief the C.D.C. team. She runs into the “escape artist” inmate making his anticlimactic escape and they work together.

There is an unfortunate scene in which a zombie attacks a family that was visiting the prison and the little girl is clearly laughing as the ghoul tries to get at her tasty entrails. The our hero is almost out of the prison when she runs into the recently zombified family. The little girls makeup was poorly applied as if they were afraid to get it anywhere near her eyes. The result is something of a raccoon effect which is the antithesis of scary. I don’t expect a huge amount of professionalism from prepubescent actors, but I do expect film editors to have the wisdom to cut their mediocre performances. As the main chick escapes from the family and runs to the gates waving her arms and yelling to the arriving forces, one of their snipers shoots her in the chest. Credits roll. The end kinda sucked.