House of the Dead 2

2005
Directed by Michael Hurst
Written by Michael Roesh and Peter Sheerer - story by Mark A. Altman
Starring (the lovely) Emmanuelle Vaugier, Ed Quinn and Sticky Fingaz

From IMDB: "A virus breaks out at a University and people start to become zombies. After 29 days, a team of AMS scientists and soldiers are sent in to deal with the problem. But while they search, things go wrong."

Oh this is starting out promising!  There's Emmanuelle Vaugier!  Had the pleasure of working with her on a nightmare shoot back in '98.  She was a pro and great to work with.

Just enough buget here to keep things comfortably in the B range.
Acting is fine.
Writing weak.  Stupid is seldom a good characteristic for any one.
These guys are pretty caviliar around zombie blood.
And what do I think of the zombie fx? Does the job.

The big African American soldier (he's called Griffin I think) just couldn't be any thicker.  After nearly being bitten because he assumed some nerd wasn't a zombie makes exactly the same mistake less than three minutes later!  Natural selection takes care of him.
"They're so fast!  So fast!!"
What?  They're slower than... well zombies.

Everybody knows you have to shoot zombies in the head.  Why is the blonde soldier wasting all her ammo with the body shots?  I'll tell you - because head shots are expensive and time consuming.  I love B movies.
In a shrewd bit of directing Hurst kills off the worst actors before too much of the film goes by.
Although Sticky Fingaz is pretty talented.  I guess his contract was limited to only a few days on set.
Did I just see the character of Ellis actually wipe the blood of a Zombie into his mouth.
Rewind.
Yes he did.  That's the kind of thing that puts geeks like me over the edge.
But otherwise I'm enjoying this little flick.
Ugh - the football scene was ridiculous.
Wow - he's spreading zombie inards over himself as a decoy.  The folks at Walking Dead would do the same thing a few years later.
They've got less than a few minutes to get out there and they just spent 1 of them chatting with a bitten soldier.  That gets a double Ugh!
Why didn't they just do the innards trick again when they were trying to make their escape?  It worked the first time.
This James Parks is a pretty good little actor.
And with a bound she was free?  How did Emmanuelle get out from under the pile of the un-dead - and then escape the warhead?  Nice move!
A deliberate bit of horror/comedy.  Worked for me.

2.5 Bloody Eyes out of 5