This Time It's Personal..."Dead Rising: End Game"

Dead Rising: EndGame (2016)

Not Rated

Starring Jesse Metcalfe, Dennis Haysbert, Marie Avgeropoulos, Keegan Connor Tracy, Billy Zane, Jessica Harmon

Directed by Pat Williams

The Story:

Chase Carter (Metcalfe) returns to expose the Army and General Lyons (Haysbert) as being behind the zombie outbreak. They've been discredited, but if he can get hard evidence this time, everyone will have to believe him. And when he discovers that Jordan (Tracy) is alive and has been experimented on, Chase puts the entire mission on the line to also save his friend.

If this review sounds vaguely familiar, it was about this time last year that I reviewed Dead Rising: Watchtower.

Welcome to the sequel, and it pretty much picks up shortly after the end of the last installment.

That said, there's a few tonal shifts in this movie.

Gone is Rob Riggle as the comic relief in the news studio.

Instead, they often cut to the various chess pieces that make up the overall story until all the parts can be linked together at the end.

Again, nothing that reinvents the zombie genre, but if you enjoyed the first one, it's definitely on par with that one, minus the comic relief.

I think there were a few more zombie attacks this time around, and some pretty good set pieces with the folks fighting for survival.

Plus a crazed Billy Zane as a mad scientist, so you've also got that to look forward to!

Final Grade: C+

Mandatory Government Vaccination Program Gone Horribly Wrong..."Dead Rising: Watchtower"

Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015)

Not Rated

Starring Jesse Metcalfe, Meghan Ory, Virginia Madsen, Keegan Connor Tracy, Dennis Haysbert, Carrie Genzel, Rob Riggle,

Directed by Zach Lipovsky

The Story:

Chase (Metcalfe), a reporter for Hit Point and his camerawoman Jordan (Tracy) are trying to find a story at a quarantined city in Oregon when they uncover the fact that the government vaccine, Zombrex, isn't working. Chase gets stuck in the city with Crystal (Ory), a woman who has the virus but also has her own supply of Zombrex, and Maggie (Madsen) who just lost her daughter. They have to find a way out of the city before it is blown to bits by the Army under General Lyons (Hasbert) direction.

Video game adaptations are often hit or miss.

Luckily, if you're trying to make a film about killing zombies, the audience will often be very forgiving.

Attach the Dead Rising name to it, and craft a few crazy zombie killing weapons, and you're halfway there.

Provide it a decent script, and you're almost golden.

Thankfully, they managed to do all of that in this film.

It keeps your attention throughout and unlike certain episodes of a certain zombie show, things actually happen. :)

Add to that the hilarious interplay between a reporter (Genzel) and previous survivor (Riggle) as the outbreak drama unfolds. If only the news were allowed to be like that in real life, it would make it worth watching.

I didn't catch it when it was streaming on Crackle.com, but did check out the DVD from Netflix a few months later.  Again, I'm all for any and all of these services offering up alternatives to big studio films.

The more movies, the merrier.

Anyway, if you like zombie movies, you'll probably enjoy this one too.

I did.

Final Grade: C+