Brian T. Jaynes directs this ridiculously bad zombie flic made on little to no budget. The use of the word directs is loose at best as Humans vs Zombies feels like it was made up on the fly. It’s films like this that make Asylum pictures look like award winning material… not really, but you know what I mean. This is independent (real independent) film making at its worst. The only thing I can really credit Jaynes for here, is actually finishing the film, something that no matter how bad it is, I feel deserves a small pat on the back.
Dark Comedy and Horror unite in this satirical thriller based on the “Live Action Role-Playing” game of the same name. Students on summer break are exposed to a deadly virus that is spread rapidly through direct human contact. The infected become enslaved by the invading “swarm” intelligence and driven by an insatiable appetite to consume human flesh. Returning home, the students spread the infection to their fellow classmates and other unsuspecting townspeople. One by one, more students fall victim to the plague,triggering an epidemic that spawns a horde of ravenous zombies. The zombie horde grows and spreads quickly. Amidst the chaos, a campus security guard,obsessed with conspiracy theories, leads a group of students to safety as they and a small band of uninfected townspeople set out to find other human survivors in an attempt to discover the source of the “zombie” virus and save the world.
First off, I can’t stress how simple it is to make a passable zombie flic, especially when you have the extras count that this one had. Filling the horde is half the battle. Unfortunately the writer, also the director tries to be clever, and in doing so destroys any chance he had of making a passable flic. It ain’t rocket science! Humans vs Zombies tries way too hard to implement a very badly written script. Trying to make sense of the outbreak is just an unnecessary step… leave that for the pros. A dozen great films before this one didn’t need to explain it, neither do you.
Performances, well lets just say too much character development and dialogue can really stain the finished product if no one can act. Yes, the acting is that terrible, bottom of the barrel awful. The director spends way too much time building the Humans vs Zombies student game, patting himself on the back with major doses of zombie nerdism. Actually, Humans vs Zombies feels like it pulls a lot from an old 80s flic called Gotcha (which I liked)…. but executed poorly. So…. the opening scene is a double suicide after a containment leak of a zombie serum somewhere out on a rig off the coast line. The scene is low budget, but nothing worse than I’ve been exposed to before, so I continued. The next scene has a bikini clad girl playfully running away from her boyfriend into the water. Moments later, out of nowhere, a zombified tech (I can assume from the rig) makes his way to the girl. He takes a huge chunk out of her shoulder. The boyfriend fights him off and takes his girlfriend home. A little later in the film, we see the girl lying in bed zombied up sleeping. The boyfriend walks in, looks at the wound and says “We should really go to the hospital”…. really…. REALLY! I think that would have been my first stop on the way home from the beach, considering she would have passed out from loss of blood. She of course attacks him and they become the perfect zombie couple.
Then there’s another scene where the director has the group planning strategies for the oncoming horde, right down to using gaming terms, agro, range, etc. It’s pretty awesomely stupid. Probably one of those scenes that sounded really good on paper, or in his head… not! And what was with the costumes when they get all pimped out… WTF!? Oh, and the kicker…. the nasty stuff the priest and security guard got sprayed with when they were in Iraq…. it made them immune to the virus. This film feels like it was made by a group of friends that should have kept it between friends.
I could seriously go on and on about how bad this film is, but it would probably take longer to write than watching the movie again…”shudder”… I have to give it one star though, and that’s for completion. No matter how bad a film is, if you can finish it and put it out there, you deserve at least one star! Unfortunately, Humans vs Zombies isn’t worth buying, renting, or even downloading. The only people who will enjoy it are the ones who worked on it… which there was a surprisingly large amount.
Share on Facebook
Social Media