I happened to catch the first half of Exhumed the other day at a horror fest I had attended. I am a huge fan of indie horror and was excited to see what was out there from real horror fans. What I saw was beyond dull and caused me to walk out. The next day I was reading reviews of the film and was surprised to see that most all of them praised the film for all sorts of reasons; visual style, acting, story, gore.... Please understand, I am a very forgiving soul when it comes to micro-budget films. Some of the greatest films of all time look awful, but make up for it in originality, story, performance and gore. Look at Peter Jackson's BAD TASTE. It's painfully bad, and yet undeniably original. I will sit through it time and time again because it has enough great material to sustain its length.
Exhumed has a very good premise with very poor execution. I love the "zombie through the ages" idea, but there is nothing worse than a good idea gone horribly wrong. Samurais and zombies...what a great idea! So much great stuff you could do with that. Sadly, nothing a great interest happens. The little fighting there is is very poorly executed, making it laughable for all the wrong reasons. I think if a little more time was taken on the script, they could have had something fun, but instead we are left with a snore fest of the walking dead. Van Helsing was a good idea in theory as well.
