Dead Rising: Endgame Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Dead Rising: Endgame Blu-ray Movie Review

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will have to watch movies like this.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman December 5, 2016

Dead Rising: Endgame releases day-and-date alongside Dead Rising 4, the latest entry into the video game series on which it is based. It's also ironic, and a little funny, that it's under the Sony label that the movie releases, yet the game is being published by Microsoft Studios and released exclusively to Windows and Xbox One with no Sony PlayStation 4 release in sight. Regardless, the movie, which is a followup to 2015's Dead Rising: Watchtower (no Blu-ray was released), is less a companion piece to the games and more a standalone experience that's a slog of a movie and a shell of the fun factor the games have on tap. Beyond a few winks and nods and some weapons crafting that's been shoehorned into the otherwise dull and meaningless plot, it's a decidedly bad movie with no redeeming value either for fans of the game series or those approaching it with no preconceived notions and only in search of some mindless zombie hacking and slashing built around a recycled plot about government conspiracies and the journalist out to uncover the truth. Yawn.

Chase Carter (Jesse Metcalfe) is a rogue journalist who is out to rescue his missing producer and save the world while he's at it, or at least millions of lives. He uncovers a nefarious scheme spearheaded by General Lyons (Dennis Haysbert) to kill everyone who has been implanted with a radical new form of Zombrex, a drug that cures those who take it from the zombie infection. Along the way, he allies with an unlikely group of survivors who must battle through hordes of the undead by any means at their disposal to stay alive long enough to save all those innocents about to die at the flip of a switch.

The Dead Rising video games are tongue-in-cheek Horror-Comedy experiences that challenge players to survive hordes of the walking dead by crafting unique weapons out of various items found scattered all over wherever the action may be unfolding, like a shopping mall or from various locations around town. Dead Rising: Endgame doesn't share much in common with the game. Change the name and take out the movie's own weapons crafting scene and it's really little more than another throwaway Asylum-level clunker with no real redeeming value, not even as intended as a completely unpretentious Zombie flick. It's just not good at what it does. Its low budget is obvious along every step, and it's easy to see that Sony and the filmmakers have taken the Asylum route with the movie. It's built on a terribly formulaic script that doesn't deviate from its projected arc from beginning to end. It casts a couple of name actors in smaller roles and the movie is, for them, little more than a waypoint on the way to the bank. The film is shot around drab locations that suffocate whatever semblance of character and identity the movie otherwise builds. Many visual effects, particularly gore, are plainly CGI and low end at that. Music is used extensively in a desperate effort to ramp up tension where little, if any, exists. This is a soulless film, inadequate even as crude Zombie entertainment, and a far cry from the games that supposedly inspired it.

Yet even beyond the movie's structural inadequacies is a story that couldn't find an original bone in its body, never mind those of its army of zombies, if any of them were carefully dissected and studied in the best labs in the world. The movie begins with one of those clunky and seriously fake looking and sounding newscast bursts that intercut scenes of zombie massacres with President Obama urging care and caution from some address that obviously has nothing to do with a zombie outbreak but that, pieced together with everything else, sounds like it. The conspiracy theory stuff isn't in the least bit juicy; the plot is nothing but a rehash of genre trope -- both "Zombie movie" trope and "Crusader Journalist" trope -- and it slowly devolves into the typical "countdown" story where something bad will happen if the hero(es) can't save the day in the nick of time. Action is dull and repetitive, certainly not helped by the aforementioned shoddy visuals and boring locales. The movie is essentially a really poor man's Resident Evil (also a Capcom game franchise) with a hair more integrity than the average Asylum piece of junk. Shame, the game's are pretty fun. This movie is not.

Dead Rising: Endgame Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dead Rising: Endgame's 1080p transfer isn't all that exciting, but it's technically stable and gets the job done. The digital source photography leaves the movie appearing rather flat and a bit glossy, but it never really struggles to find enough detail to please. The movie's various industrial backdrops look nice, with enough worn and weathered complexity on walls, pipes, and other odds and ends keeping the image appearing sharp. Skin tones and clothing lines don't find the sort of eye-catching intimacy of the best presentations, but core, fundamental details aren't hard to come by. Colors are fine. The movie takes on a slightly pale, gray, desaturated look about it. It's a bit bleak, but red blood (practical and digital), clothes, and various accents enjoy enough vibrancy to satisfy. Black levels are adequately deep and flesh tones are fine under the movie's parameters. Source noise is mild and no other major eyesores are apparent.

Dead Rising: Endgame Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Dead Rising: Endgame's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is, much like the video, no great shakes in terms of how it was engineered, but Sony's presentation handles what the movie has on offer nicely enough. Music is suitably wide and clear, supported by mild surround activity and a decent low end presence. Action, such as gunfire, thuds and pounds, squishy zombie gore, roaring helicopters, and other such genre staples present with enough oomph and depth to get the point across. Light atmospherics are uncommon but present well enough, and with a decent surround sensation. Dialogue is clear and well prioritized, mostly, anyway; a few exchanges suffer under the burden of heavier elements, like when a chopper takes off at film's end. Still, the track is fine all-around, even if it's not up to par of the best movies with the largest budgets.

Dead Rising: Endgame Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Dead Rising: Endgame contains a few brief extras. Seven "temporary tattoos" are included.

• Bringing Zombies to "Life" (1080, 0:55): A montage of makeup and prosthetic application.
• From Game to Screen (1080p, 2:32): A quick look back at the last movie, Watchtower, where the movies fit into the game franchise, working with Capcom, and making this new movie scarier than the original.
• Making the Weapons (1080p, 1:19): A look at the game-inspired weapons in the movie, both "real" and rubberized.
• Who Is Chase Carter? (1080p, 1:14): Briefly exploring the character by way of interview snippets and clips from the film.
• Who Is Jill Ekland? (1080p, 1:00): Briefly exploring the character by way of interview snippets and clips from the film.
• Who Is Jordan Blair? (1080p, 0:50): Briefly exploring the character by way of interview snippets and clips from the film.
• Who Is Sandra Lowe? (1080p, 1:02): Briefly exploring the character by way of interview snippets and clips from the film.

Dead Rising: Endgame Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's not a surprise that Dead Rising: Endgame is a lame excuse for a movie and even fairly poor by video game-turned-movie standards. It plays about as one would expect of a low rent direct-to-video flick, replete with subpar production values, flat acting, bland direction, low end visual effects, and so on and so forth. Even quality actors like Dennis Haysbert and Billy Zane can't help it. Sony's Blu-ray is decent enough, delivering good video, fair lossless audio, and a few extras. Skip it.