Zoombies

When a strange virus quickly spreads through a safari park and turns all the zoo animals undead, those left in the park must stop the creatures before they escape and zombify the whole city.

Yes, the CGI is beyond deplorable. Yes, it comes from The Asylum, who have almost never made a good movie. And yes, it blatantly rips off "Jurassic Park" (though at least it acknowledges this). And yet, somehow, it manages to succeed as a so bad it's good movie.

Unlike garbage like "Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre", this film had a certain level of heart and humor. Few of the characters are likable, but it has an unpredictability to it that makes it fresh. And the way a child takes on a koala is... well, somewhat disturbing and yet hilarious.

A virus gets spread through a little monkey that makes animals go insane and kill people. The monkey was at a huge wildlife park that is getting ready to open to the public. Before long other animals are infected and it is survival of the fittest as employees and interns try and get out alive.

This is one of the better Asylum Films which doesn't say much I guess. Watching zombie giraffes chasing people was funny. I know that's a stretch. For some reason they had to CGI the staff riding elephants. I thought of Calamity Of Snakes (1982) when the birds are attacking people. The same cheesiness when they go about killing them.

Well, it's a cheap horror movie with lots of low grade digital effects,,, not too much going on there. Worth some laughs, but don't get your hopes up about anything else. Just skip it,,,

This was one the first live action movies by "The Asylum" that I ever watched. After seeing their horrible computer animated movies like "Trolland" and "Homeward", I wasn't expecting a good film at all. And, wouldn't you know it, I didn't get one.

The plot is obviously ripped-off from Jurassic Park, which the director admitted. A new Zoo is about to be opened, but then a strange new virus that turns animals into viscous, undead, killers breaks loose. Now the zoo employees must fight for survival and stop the virus from leaking out and potentially infesting the world.

Naturally, the acting is awful. The entire cast knows they're in a bad movie and make little to no effort in their roles. The characters hardly even react to the events around them, even seeing people get mauled to death by the zoombies. Or even when they get mutilated themselves. That one SWAT team officer screaming: "I'm in so much...Aaaaughh!" as he was mauled to death by a lion? Laughable.

Predictably for a horror B-movie, most of the characters are unlikable, especially the interns. Few have any backstories, and even the few do tend to be uninteresting. Only Dr. Ellen Rogers (Kim Nielsen) and her daughter Thea (LaLa Nestor) have a notable bond, and even then, it's seen sparingly.

The movie may try to be scary with the zoombies, but it pretty much fails. Killer giraffes? That's actually hilarious. The monkeys were way more annoying than scary with ear piecing screeches. The scene where the SWAT team got slaughtered by lion might have been half-way decent if it didn't happen offscreen.

The CGI is painfully obvious and very poorly rendered. The giraffes and elephants were the worst computer effects of all. Kifo is clearly someone in a cheap gorilla suit when he isn't CGI. And the main trio riding elephants looks totally fake with camera angles only showing them and not their respective mounts. It's so bad, it's funny.

The action scenes were choppy, stale, and poorly edited, especially the scenes where the heroes are thrown from a crashing car or knocked back by the exploding aviary at the end. There's nothing new or exciting here.

Granted, I've seen worse than this, but of course, I've seen way better. And unfortunately for my mental health, it's far from the last film by "The Asylum" that I'll be reviewing, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to warn others against watching anything they make.

There is a temptation to compare this to Sharknado in the whole 'so lame that it is cool' category of terrible movies. The problem is that while Sharknado utilises a stupid concept to make a movie that is pure trash but also pure awesome, Zoombies is mostly the trash part with very little awesome.

There are clear comparisons to Jurassic World, but where that movie's shaky plot is made up for by big budget effects, cool set pieces and Chris Pratt, this movie has none of these, so it is just mostly rubbish.

Sure there are some laughs at seeing actors pretend they are sitting on elephants and hanging from a rope (seriously how hard is it to actually shoot actors hanging from a rope - just put them on a rope a couple of feet above the ground), but overall it is far more cringe than amusement. Possibly good for a laugh if you are tired of all the other 'so lame it's cool' movies out there, but really this one is the pits.