I love zombie films, but am reminded far too often of how easy it is for people with no money and even less original ideas to churn out really bad ones. I was recently a one-day background zombie extra in a local low-budget zombie short film where my friend was helping with makeup, but I'm not expecting miracles when I see the final product. Here I will give you a review that isn't influenced by the reviewer being from the same country or even town as the filmmakers. It feels like some of the positive feedback seen on IMDb might be from people who know the filmmakers.
Wow. This is truly of the 'shot-on-video no-budget backyard zombie genre' (plus aliens). This feels like a home movie shot with friends who can't act and that's pretty much what it is. It's still better than "Dead Life", but then again what isn't? It wants to be something like Peter Jackson's "Braindead" (aka Dead Alive) with its gross out fluids and even a lawnmower joke, but the difference is that Peter Jackson had a well-made film with: a funny script, some evidence of a minor budget, people who could act, a crew who had an idea of how to make a film and something resembling a coherent narrative and story that kept your interest. This really has none of those ingredients. The guys behind Plaga Zombie may be fans of Jackson, Rodriguez and Raimi (three cultishly popular directors who've made horror films on small budgets), but in this film they didn't really exhibit a fraction of the talent or ingenuity of those directors. Their sequel was much better and hopefully in time they will improve and provide us fans with something worth watching more than once. I know this was made with no budget, but a good script doesn't take money, just creativity and an ability to write dialogue. This film is lacking a good script. Go watch Rodriguez's short film "Bedhead" to see what can be done with very little resources and a bit of ingenuity.
I tried watching Plaga Zombie once before and gave up halfway through and put my DVD back on the shelf with my other zombie movies. Months later I finally gave the sequel a chance and found it had some merits and decided to try watching this first film again to see where it started. Immature humor can be done well by filmmakers who can write a script well and get the right cast and crew behind them. The excessive amount of childish humor here might seem like really clever stuff if you're in the 7th grade and haven't bothered to discover better low budget films yet, otherwise you'll probably be disappointed. Plaga Zombie only looks a little better than those cheesy home movie short films M. Night Shyamalan made as a kid and sometimes puts on his dvds to show his humble origins.
STORY: Dr. Bill is a med school dropout; I suspect this is not because of the accident they mention, but because of his complete ineptitude to diagnose a patient. His roommate wakes up with his back covered in what appears to be a whole case of used bubblegum affixed to his back (remember never to fall asleep chewing gum!). Bill's buddy, an out of work wrestler, runs into the room asking him to help his former manager. It appears both have the same set of symptoms, which our genius would be doctor surmises is some disease that infects the body and then the mind. Brilliant work, doc! They eventually realize aliens have infected their friends and neighbors and there is some sort of zombie epidemic which they must try to survive.
DE-ANIMATION METHODS: Dr. Bill concocts an acid solution to be administered via syringe to the infected to kill the 'host organism' thereby producing a large volume of foam and fluids from the body of the zombie. Cue cheesy gross out effects.
MAKE-UP EFFECTS: various colors of face paint, some latex and lots of colorful fluids and what looks like cornflake/oatmeal and food coloring type effects. Ultra low-budget.
The story, what little there was of it, couldn't keep my attention. I can't really recommend you spend 68 minutes of your life watching this unless you want to learn from its mistakes for your own backyard movie. Go straight to sequel, do not pass go and do not spend any $$$ (luckily there's a US DVD that included this film as an extra to the sequel, because this isn't worth spending your money on). Better yet, go watch "Braindead" (aka Dead Alive).
