Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Zombie Night Blu-ray Movie Review

Dead comes the night.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 13, 2014

What are the absolutely most fundamental, need-to-have ingredients for any Zombie flick? There need to be bushels of zombies -- not better known as walkers, biters, moaners, call them anything but "Zeke," for pete's sake -- of course, as well as a band or two or three of survivors fending them off so that the zombies have victims on which to give chase and munch. So those are the two main pieces in The Asylum's Zombie Night, a retread genre movie from the cult favorite bottom-scraping studio that produced such genre gems as 2012 Zombie Apocalypse and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies. This film falls somewhere in the middle in terms of quality. It's a bit more full and satisfying than the empty, meandering world of the former and nowhere near as novel or fun as the latter. But it still inhabits a fairly cruddy middle ground littered with the forgotten corpses of countless other films that have been made to capitalize on the successes of George Romero and Robert Kirkman, no surprise considering the source.

Head and dead.

One night, the unimaginable happens: the dead rise from their graves. Zombie Night follows a handful of people trying to survive the hordes of walking dead, including teenager Traci (Rachel G. Fox) and her father Patrick (Anthony Michael Hall), Birdy (Daryl Hannah) along with her mother (Shirley Jones), and her neighbor Joseph (Alan Ruck). They must deal with the realities of a zombie infestation and hope to survive the night because they believe the world will return to normal as dawn breaks. And that's pretty much the story. Throw in a bunch of zombie attacks and people fussing about as they try and survive, and behold the entirety of The Asylum's Zombie motion picture.

As noted above, this is a nuts-and-bolts Zombie flick, one that's not particularly good but at the same time one that's not particularly bad. There's nothing here genre fans haven't seen before. The film is populated with the same old song and dance routine recycled countless times before and sure to pop up a few times more in the coming years. The dead rise up and come after the living hoping for some live, fresh flesh to chew on to satisfy whatever base craving keeps pushing them forward (ever notice there are no vegetarian zombies?). But at its peak the movie is just a rehash of simple genre tripe, a collection of people who do the same basic things and face the same cliché choices, for example deciding whether to put a bullet into the head of a loved one after the person in question has suffered a bite. It works well enough in better movies and stories in which there's a superior construct of dramatic depth and characterization, which obviously isn't the case here. Zombie Night forgets that the best Zombie movies aren't really about zombies but rather about the world man makes for himself when confronted with a new challenge. Here, it's simple run and hide and bash some zombie heads. It's serviceable fun, but it's sort of like comparing the excellent The Walking Dead video games to basic, repetitious zombie shooters like Burn Zombie Burn!. One has story, depth, and meaning, the other has...someone killing zombies. There's a place for both, but in a genre that's quickly becoming over-saturated with quick-and-easy clones, chances are most viewers will want the meatier option rather than the one that's cheap, easy, and and as undead as the bad guys.

The Asylum does scrape together a handful of name actors for the film, though with material this routinely dull, neither the faces nor the names tied to them make much of a difference. Anthony Michael Hall, Daryl Hannah, and Alan Ruck aren't exactly Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Robert De Niro, but it's a solid enough trio that has put in some good work in the past and paid their dues, so to speak. It's both a shame and a pleasure to see them in this movie, a shame because they're better than this, a pleasure because they at least give the audience hope that maybe they can work their magic and turn a terribly dull script into something more workably palatable. But this is The Asylum, after all, so performances appear stifled in favor of getting the shoot done. Even good actors like these can't escape from the clutches of a rush job built on a shaky foundation. They're here to sell potential audiences on the movie, not make the movie any better. That's par for the course for The Asylum. As for the movie's other technical details, the zombie makeup looks fine for a lower budget production, though those wearing it often look more like a herd of people having fun at Halloween than they do real zombies in a real zombie apocalypse. There are some obviously phony visuals in play -- take a look at the cemetery, particularly the spots where the dead rise from the ground -- but for the most part the movie shies away from the typical Asylum barrage of crummy special effects that so frequently hinder, not help, the studio's films.

Zombie Night Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Zombie Night features a consistently nondescript but generally even 1080p transfer. It's flat and dull, predominantly, with a good deal of low light shots, scenes, and sequences that don't allow for an explosion of detail or color. The HD photography does offer crisp, accurate clothing and facial lines, and there are some nice textures here and there inside houses and out in the cemetery, but viewers shouldn't expect any sort of eye-catching levels of detail. What colors there are satisfy. Home interiors are suitably warm, clothes and skin tones appear natural, metallic morgue surfaces and body bag textures look fine, and some greenery satisfies in terms of basic shading. Black levels are a bit problematic, with paleness and a light push towards purple both evident problems. Occasionally light-to-heavy noise also interferes in these darker shots. Otherwise, this is a fairly stable and watchable 1080p transfer from The Asylum.

Zombie Night Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Zombie Night features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack that's probably the best-case scenario for a lower budget Horror film. Musical clarity is fine, with solid stage presence, good spacing, and a tight low end, critical in particular here since music is practically a nonstop companion in some capacity throughout the film. Stage balance is sometimes impressive as sound rises and lowers, for example, in one scene featuring police and a little girl in chapter four. Various sound effects are nicely implemented and well defined, from someone beating on a thick wooden door to low zombie moans and groans. A few gunshots rank better than "puny" but never excel to anything resembling a high level of realism. An explosion later in the film does offer some good oomph and spirited bass. Dialogue delivery is accurate and center-focused. Overall, this is a good all-around performer from The Asylum.

Zombie Night Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Zombie Night contains the usual throwaway Asylum extras.

• Making of Featurette (1080p, 7:25): A quick discussion of the story, zombie makeup, and more.
• Gag Reel (1080p, 1:02).
• Trailers: Additional Asylum titles.

Zombie Night Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Zombie Night is about as generic a genre movie as one can make. It satisfies basic requirements and stars a few recognizable faces, but it's otherwise a paint-by-numbers sort that's unimaginative and content to simply put all the ingredients together, not do anything even remotely special with them. It's the zombie movie equivalent of a decent fast food burger. There's much, much better and some that are worse. The Asylum's Blu-ray release of Zombie Night delivers adequate video, good audio, and a couple of needless extras. This should be a pass but for the most ardent genre and Asylum fans.