Some Like it Hot Mess: Review for iZombie 306 by A. Zombie
Clive wraps the case, suddenly Liv’s under no geas and is free to express her natural self. This leads me to believe the writers and production team knew the Sweet Lady Pain gimmick was a turd in the punch bowl. Yet they ran with it. For what purpose? To further deride sex workers in pop culture? Yeah, no. This isn’t something they can pass off as, “Oh, well, the brains wear off.” Liv rode Janko’s brain until she collapsed, utilizing the mercenary’s self-control to lock down her emotions after Drake’s final death. That took a while. Liv ditched the leather and whips on day two or three. She didn’t over-exert herself in any fights. Nor was she forced to heal any serious wounds. Both would take extra nutrients to heal, possibly explaining how Liv’s typical meal schedule wouldn’t be sufficient. Or we could just say, the writers messed up. They know they messed up. They went to great lengths to make us forget it by rushing Liv into a narcissist’s brain, therefore pitting her against everyone and causing drama. This is akin to tying shiny paper around nectarine tree limbs as a distraction so the birds won’t take the fruit, but truth is, the birds will always get what they want. What fans want is a show with a woman at the helm who isn’t deliberately knocked down to become the laughing stock in order to cover poor decisions from the production staff. I, for one, will keep checking this tree to see if there’s anything worthwhile to digest. There’s so much potential. It’s trapped behind a messy patriarchal wall, though.
Liv isn’t the only woman on the show getting this flavor of treatment in the writers’ room. Peyton still suffers barbs from Ravi over her personal life, only for every crappy thing he’s said to be proven right so Peyton is obligated to apologize. Apologize to the man so obsessed over who she’s kissing, he hopped in bed with a woman he detests? Are you kidding? But, it happens. This week’s case is centered on the victim, Yvonne, and her affair with a married club owner, with a jealous coworker red herring. Who actually offed the self-centered party girl? The roommate she screwed over. A woman, by the way. Not one of the sexually-motivated angles Clive and Liv investigate produces a lick of information. I dare not go back to count how many of the women who’ve died on the show were given a similar treatment, but off the top of my head it’s already too many. And when the victims themselves aren’t interesting sexually—because of race, weight, age, etc.—a side character, like Rhonda in episode 304, is tapped to fill the position. Could we not?
For a fun writing exercise, I’d like iZ writers to pen a script which has no mention whatsoever of sex. It happens in shows lead by men all the time! Why is it any different for Liv? She’s a zombie! That’s rather interesting on its own. Add in her career choice and it’s a story all in itself. With so much story fodder, why the obsession with the women on the show having sex? This isn’t how you present women’s sexual liberty. Go back to the drawing board.
Major is back to his puppy-dog-esque self after taking the cure. Ravi isn’t as calm. He obsessively tests Major’s memory. He’s so desperate to save his bro, he asks Liv—doped on dingbat brain—to take shifts watching their human-again friend. Which, of course, she doesn’t even bother trying to do. In an attempt to do one last good thing before he loses himself, Major takes an unannounced trip to visit his family. Cue panic. Flailing. And a big ol’ truth bomb dropped on Peyton like a load from a rhino’s backend. Blaine faked it. Well, most of it. The cure does indeed strip memories, but it’s more like a hard reboot than a full wipe. It took a couple days for Blaine to remember his old ways, and he hated it. He hid the truth to start over. Great news for Major, but Blaine’s lies put Peyton in an awful position yet again.
A functional cure also means Liv can finally stop being a pawn for whatever weird fantasies the writers are working out on the page.
Or not. See, the cure’s gone missing. There’s only one real suspect in Team Zombie’s mind.
Don E. has a regular at his bar who’s flat-out tired of the brain game and wants out without eating the end of a pistol. Being the ultimate businessman, Don E. skips over to the morgue to present Ravi with a lucrative deal, they split the money from the rich guy and hand over the cure. No go. Ravi has a finite amount of serum and probably has names to go with most of them on his mental list. Obviously there’s a demand for the cure. Who’s always around when there’s an opportunity to exploit? Yeah, Don E. is the usual suspect this season. But in this case, he’s the scapegoat when Blaine absconds with the remaining syringes of the serum. It looks like he’s going to make a new designer drug for the dead set based off the blue memory goo. So why take the cure, too? My guess is population control. Slip the cure into his drug and watch Angus lose his brain-munching customer base. It’s Blaine, the sky’s the limit with his scheming ways. He may surprise me.
Wag the Tongue Slowly: Review for iZombie 304 by A. Zombie
This review discusses adult content.
Fasten your seatbelts. The muck is deep on this path.
Let’s just start with the case. A lot of the seriously harmful language toward women comes in during the latter half of the investigation when Clive and Liv bring in coworkers harassed by Cheryl, the office gossip monger who accidentally overdosed from Utopium-laced yogurt. While under the influence of Chatty Cathy, Liv has one vision. It’s a scene from an adult film outing coworker Rhonda as a porn star. That wasn’t the first time the character had been outed; in the backstory, Cheryl exposed Rhonda by sharing her films with the entire company—likely via an illegal download so Rhonda didn’t even profit from the sales. Yeah. Okay, no. That’s not a quirky plot point to exploit for some cheap giggles when The Guys find out the case involves porn. For sex workers who are outed, it’s rarely something they can just brush off. The stigma behind the work instantly pollutes their new work environment. They’re almost expected to perform in some sick corner of their coworkers’ minds. For someone who may want to move past that stage of their life with a clean slate, outing means uprooting and finding a fresh place to start life again. Rhonda doesn’t even react to the second outing, this time to the police and morgue crew, in a believable way. She fluffs her chest and draws focus to her body, indicating that the attention thrilled her in a way. There’s the performance I mentioned, used this time to, I don’t know, talk her way out of the cops looking at her movies? It makes no sense for a former sex worker whose been outed twice in professional settings to wave it off with a flirt. Frustrated? Yes. Angry. Totally. And I don’t buy that crud excuse that she’s hiding her part in the prank-gone-wrong. It’s careless writing which put the character in such a horrible position. They could have done literally anything else when Rhonda formulated a comeback to Clive’s questioning, but by choosing the exploitive route, they’ve failed to uphold the safety of women foremost. The week before Liv traipses down Domme Road, writers demonstrate how much of a train wreck it’ll be by failing to handle Rhonda’s story with any consideration for sex workers as humans.
Then there’s Ravi. At this point the character has to go, or the writers need a good talking to about how to stop enabling awful male behavior by depicting it through a character who used to have a moral compass. They’re obsessed with Peyton’s sex life since Liv isn’t having any and it’s not good television. I pity these women who were brought onto a show which could be so unique, but the story lines written for them are the same two or three plots we see for women in most entertainment. And now Ravi has a terminal case of creepy guy syndrome. If Ravi were a real man, no woman in his social circle would date him at this point in his life. He’s fixated on Peyton’s sex life, without any consideration for her feelings, and fueled by his righteous indignation that she dare sleep with anyone else. Ravi publicly humiliated Peyton and blackmailed Blaine to test a serum he didn’t know would work or kill the guy. He’d rather get drunk and wallow in his sense of betrayal than help a friend do what could possibly be his last mission before he loses his memory. Sleeping with a woman Ravi hates is more preferable than a heartfelt conversation to clear the air with Peyton, but it’s her fault for catching him in the aftermath of the act. The topper is the instant Ravi heard there is an adult star under investigation by their team, he’s practically a walking cartoon penis. Obsession comes hard and fast, and after Ravi binge watches hours of Rhonda’s films, he’s rearing to get his stalk on. The audacity of the writers lies in that they felt no guilt over Ravi stalking a woman who’d been endlessly harassed by the deceased and her coworkers, only for the police to dredge it up again. Yes, Cheryl died from Rhonda’s actions. It was reckless to prank someone with drugs. No one should ever be dosed without consent. That doesn’t give writers license to treat a sex worker with so much disrespect, though. She’s still a human, not a physical embodiment of all sexuality and its perceived evils.
In other matters, Major finally has a solid lead on Natalie. He’s also too close to death for Ravi’s comfort. With that in mind, the dynamic duo band together and bumble through tracking Osborne Oates—some scum-sucking jerk who apparently is way into human trafficking. Through him they find a scary as hell security guard, but most importantly, Natalie’s hideout. There’s a hitch in the plan. Well, other than Major having nothing left to lose and making rash decisions right and left. Natalie won’t leave. She refuses to endanger Major. His last ditch effort to help is to give her his syringe with the cure, plus a warning about the memory loss. While he does escape Natalie’s guard squad, he’s likely heading straight into another mess when his zombie squad deploys on its first mission the next day.
Clive and Liv do make progress with the anti-Z message board. They track a local gun range owner who piques their interest with his posts, and the zombie-heavy advertising for his business. The plot strands tangle again, almost wonderfully so, when Harley Jones turns out to be brother to the Max Rager employee who, literally, lent Clive and Liv a hand at the doomed party. Jones is pretty much who you think he’ll be. White. Not in great shape, but large enough to be threatening. Mouth runs off without his brain fully engaging. The only difference between Jones and other crackpot racists is he has insider information about zombies and poses an actual threat. Despite that, he says he’s not the one who pulled the trigger on Wally’s family. I believe him. He seems to type to brag about horrific decisions. And now I’m going to throw up my eyeball pudding at that thought.
Next week, Domme Brain. I’m honestly not looking forward to it.
Eat, Pray, Liv: Review for iZombie 303 by A. Zombie
Ravi tells Major he’s got a few weeks left before he must take the cure or die. By the episode’s end, I’m certain that time frame is far, far shorter. This guillotine over Major’s memories is held by a single strand on a frayed rope. He knows it. The painful truth is right there in his eyes while watching Liv play that ridiculous dancing game with his new work pal, Justin. One might mistake it as a nudge toward a rekindled relationship. It just so happens that happy friends are one thing Major has lacked since the zombie thing started, and if he’s going out soon, he might as well do as Liv’s brain-influenced babbling suggests—live in the moment. In the moment doesn’t include bland, bagged brain mush. He and Justin break the feeding protocol to imbibe in the real thing. I’m digging this happier Major. How long until he’s forced to take the cure? What if the memory serum doesn’t work—we’ll talk testing ethics later—and he’s rebooted while serving in a zombie mercenary squad? There’s no real good outcome unless Ravi’s serum does indeed reverse the memory snafu, but that opens a whole new world of problems for Major’s future.
The thing with Ravi and Peyton? The plot went to the place it never should have. Why? So Peyton could say some deep, insightful things and be all grr-arg, woman power! And then they turn around and have Ravi learn absolutely nothing from forcing Peyton into a corner where she had to defend not only her right to make decisions for herself, but her right to have sex at all with anyone who isn’t Ravi. The cap on the entire ridiculous story is after Ravi is a sex-paranoid nutjob in front of Team Zombie while professing his love, Peyton goes to him and appears to at least somewhat forgive him with a kiss. But wait, he’s already slept with the woman he swears he hates more than snails hate salt. Why even trot out this moral lesson? All men will see is that Ravi still has sex with an attractive woman, so what’s the problem with how he treated Peyton? You don’t get to berate someone in front of their friends about who they sleep with, mortify them, and win a prize. To assume Ravi can have whoever he wants, whenever he wants because he said he’s sorry is precisely how this show continues to perpetuate unhealthy romantic expectations. It’s obvious in the weird sub plot stating Liv can’t be happy in bed because she’s secretly unhappy and guilt-ridden over her brain-eating. It’s the way Peyton has been used as a fire hydrant in a dog park since the get-go, men marking their territory right and left. It’s Major caring more about women he barely knows, but the two closest to him are constantly in danger, sometimes through his own doing. It’s the writers assuming every non-STEM employed woman Liv eats is secretly a slut, crazy, or too caught up in “being a woman” to have a career. For a show with a woman on all the advertising, it does a crap job at representing them. I know not one woman who would’ve kissed a man after what Ravi said when he emotionally blackmailed Blaine into taking the memory cure. Not. One. A few certainly would’ve punched him, instead. With a fist, not lips. Got that, iZ writers?
Let’s get to the case for the week. Topher is a mindfulness teacher, focused on helping others look past negative thoughts, to live in the moment without fear. During his solo meditation, someone introduces his personal Shambhala to a Buddha statue. Clive and Liv dig up a far different past for the Zen guy. Once upon a time, he was a venture capitalist with partners Mitch and Devon. Things went sideways, someone turned to drugs for start-up money, and Mitch spent years in jail while the other two moved on to become legitimate businessmen and mindfulness coaches. It doesn’t take a genius to solve the crime once they look past the red herring a “random” homeless guy tosses in their way. Topher’s brain is one of the better personalities foisted on Liv, honestly. His case just isn’t that intriguing.
While Liv and Clive seize Mitch’s future moments to pay for his newest crime, Blaine is having one hell of a week. The last problem on his list is the potentially harmful serum Ravi bullied him into testing. The first problem, really the only real problem Blaine should worry about if he were his old self, is Angus. The old man wastes no time letting Blaine know he’s back from the deep freeze, in part as a test, but mostly to see the fear of God in his son’s eyes. Disappointing day for Angus; Blaine only fears the man he used to be, the horrible person he’s forced to face every time someone coughs up a story he can’t remember. After getting his money back from Blaine, Angus sinks it all into a restaurant. His new business will eclipse the under-the-table brain biz Blaine’s running in the mortuary’s basement. We’re talking top of the line service. For the right price, Angus’ new associate, Dino, will secure any brain their customers desire. Don E. is way out of his element, and seriously missing Blaine, but tries to be clever enough not to get dead. That may require more work than he thought. Angus won’t wait for word-of-mouth advertising. Nope. Don E. will make customers to fill Angus’ demands. If everyone thought Stoll had a bad idea for zombies taking over Seattle, DeBeers is about to make it a thousand times worse.
That’s if Katty Kupps doesn’t expose zombies to humans before they do it themselves. She’s close to connecting the dots. Too close. Seattle is a zombie powder keg. Isn’t it great?
Zombie Knows Best: Review for iZombie 302 by A. Zombie
Not only has the production finally given Clive a history, but said history is heart-wrenching and explains so much about the character in so few moments. This non-cop Clive is probably my favorite character on the show to date. So why did it take so long to delve into what makes the man tick? Too stuck on brain gimmicks to undermine Liv? Who knows. Let’s just keep up with the gold they’ve given us. Why start the review with something so random? Because Clive’s mental state directly effects how the time line for the episode unfolds. We start at the end, with Cavanaugh overhearing someone shouting. It’s Clive. He has zero chill, so it’s obviously the perfect time to grill him about maybe having a relationship with Anna, mother to Wally. The woman in the shooting last week. At first, he plays it off like they were just neighbors. By the episode’s end, there’s a new ‘ship in the Fan Sea . . . at the bottom because we already know how the story ends. Clive does get the short end of the romantic stick lately. Though, not nearly as traumatically as Liv seeing as, technically, everyone she’s called boyfriend since the show began has died.
The flashback to Clive’s mustache isn’t the only barbed wire thread the writers wove in this week. Hang on to your hats. They’re preparing an avalanche of moral and social issues with the push to protect zombies. The implication of Wally’s family facing execution because some wingnut on a web-board doxed their dangerously paranoid neighbor is a huge red cape waved at a notoriously jumpy bull. It’ll be interesting to see how they unravel the message board mess. I guarantee Clive won’t keep his cool once they have names and faces to go with the malicious people hunting zombies in the city.
Alright, on to the crime for the episode. Cindy and Stanley Chen are at each other’s throats over something which will seemingly ruin the teen girl’s social life. A vehicle rams their stopped car, neither survive the accident. Liv whips up chili, two batches. For giggles, Major gets the moody teenager brain—keep in mind, Liv still has a turn as a dominatrix for the season and I’m struggling to see the gender balance when it comes to the extremes asked from the actors. It takes no time at all for Major to bounce around the morgue, singing along to whatever is hip right now. Meanwhile, Liv is so supportive of everyone she sets eyes on, it’s annoying sixty seconds into her new persona. Major has a body image meltdown and triggers a vision—Cindy holding up her cell phone to show her father an image she thought was disgusting, but when he says they have to tell the police, she won’t betray her friend Winslow’s trust. Turns out, once Liv gets the other half of the vision, Winslow has been in a relationship with her step-father. Okay, now my skin is crawling. So basically, a white family kills an Asian family over their own weird sex spat, lies about it without shedding a tear, and they’re all eventually rounded up by the police for their part in the murders.
While Clive solves the Chen case and broods about Wally and Anna’s murders, the remaining Team Zombie members deal with other fires in their lives. Ravi fixates on Peyton’s sex life in a really unhealthy way. The writers need to get over it already. Using jealousy to propel a love story undermines the integrity of the relationship. Major has a phone number Natalie gave Janko, but no clue where it leads to. And Liv is faced with the possibility that Vivian Stoll will put her zombie commando team on the offensive sooner rather than later after the anti-zombie message board comes to light. The same team Major is training for, but he can’t focus while on whacky brains to help Liv solve crime. This is where they butt heads. Liv feeds for a noble purpose to subdue her guilt over cannibalism. Major sees brains as fuel for his muscles and mind, so why not use the Fillmore-Graves approved brain mash to get what his body needs without the distracting visions and mood swings? He’s too teen-brained to really hash out the problem, but rest assured they’ll come back to it when he’s more himself.
Coming up, daddy drama with Blaine. It’s going to be brutal. I can’t wait.
Heaven Just Got a Little Bit Smoother: Review for iZombie 301 by A. Zombie
There’s not much of a time gap from the finale to the season opener. A whopping two minutes, actually. That’s so we can continue to watch Stoll wield her impressive skills. Within moments of hundreds dying in an attack, she’s spun a story, added input from Liv, and ordered her people to blow the building to destroy evidence. Wow. I can’t even walk and chew gum without really focusing—decaying brain and all. The new boss in town butts heads with Team Z at a follow-up meeting the next day. But not everyone thinks she’s a tad paranoid to fear D-Day—Discovery Day, when humans learn zombies exist. Major’s turn with zombie hunting left him with a unique perspective on how the average person would handle the news. Considering his path, everyone is doomed. They may as well tell the zombies to invest in those weird cavern homes. Stoll’s plan for the city means there won’t be an army of Majors running around. How far do her preparation plans reach? Well, she’s obtained the only enhancement drug for the undead, has a slew of armed soldiers, and it only takes one second to “breed” a new zombie fighter, compared to the traditional eighteen or so years it takes to make a human soldier. I’d say she’s off to a good start, and knows it. Clive is so not on board with anything he hears in this meeting. He’s still trying to mentally hurdle the Big Z news, let alone the notion that his city is in a turf war, where one side will eat the other side if given too much freedom by their leadership. It’s not all doom for him this day. He sees Wally, a kid who used to live in his building, who just happens to be a zombie. The peeks at Clive without his copface are so quick, one almost misses the chance to see what’s really behind the badge. We may get more of these glimpses, seeing as the zombie haven plans may be what cost Wally’s family their lives later in the episode.
Seeing as the party and ensuing riot were pretty massive, there was bound to be a few slip-ups when cleaning evidence and making sure any survivors were on the right team. There’s two notable mistakes haunting the gang so far—a dead body with brains in the stomach, and the cowardly front gate guard, Billy Cook. The guard finds his way to nutjob talkshow host Chuck Burd’s radio booth. Unfortunately, Clive and Liv are too late to stop him from dropping the z-bomb on live air. Burd has enough proof to become a serious pain in the backside to the zombie-protection movement. He’s one of those who love to incite violence just to have something else to yell about. The second problem for the gang rolls into the morgue, accompanied by Ravi’s old boss, Katty Kupps from the CDC. Talk about tension; none of it sexual. Ravi and Kupps snip at each other pretty much nonstop until he and Liv get the call about Wally’s family. The fighting could get tiresome. Or we could simply enjoy Christina Cox while she’s on the show and hope her character morphs to something more than just Ravi’s antagonist.
There’s turmoil at the mortuary. Don E. is done playing punching bag to people more powerful than him. He’s also one-hundred-percent convinced Blaine is faking amnesia as a power play. With a terse conversation, the band splits. Blaine may not know who he is, but he knows he doesn’t have to take abuse from someone who accidentally admits he’s lied about the business arrangement between them. In a last petulant effort to rob Blaine, Don E. searches the basement. He says one last goodbye to Chief, and checks his pockets for the missing cash. That’s when Don E. strikes gold—Angus DeBeers’ frozen body. Cha-ching. It’s not a couple grand in small, non-sequential bills, but if he can convince Angus to work together, the income will flow like the Mississippi. Judging from their first business meeting, it’s going to be hell for anyone standing in their way.
A missing father may be the last thing on Blaine’s mind. Actually, he’s not on his mind at all since he doesn’t remember having a father, let alone freezing the surly jerk. Nor is he concerned about Stoll, whose husband he blackmailed and she thinks had murdered. No, Blaine’s mind is all about helping Peyton. And boy does she need help. Boss is on the run, tucked in a country which won’t ship him back home for her to punch in the nose. With that major worry taken care of, she should’ve been able to relax. Only, now someone’s harassing her via Twitter. Why not call on Ravi for help? He’s wigging after finding out she slept with Blaine. Because that’s how well-adjusted men earn the trust of their dearest once again.
Damn. My eye rolled under the desk.
The gang is still recovering from the Max Rager party. It won’t be a quick fix, especially since the brain keeping Liv from mourning Drake wore off. Settle in for some head-in-sand determination from Liv as she flails around, coping in her own headache-inducing way. Oh, and next week, Major turns into a teenage girl. So can’t wait for him to, like, finally get some chill, or whatever. I can’t believe I wrote that sentence. Anyway, I wonder how his new boss will take to the weird brain shenanigans from the morgue crew. Stoll doesn’t seem like one to suffer fools lightly.
A. Zombie Reviews . . . Resident Evil: Extinction by A. Zombie
Rated: R (Strong Violence, Nudity)
Starring: Milla Jovovich, Oded Fehr, Ali Larter, and Iain Glen
In the franchise’s third installment, not only has Raccoon City fallen to the dead, but the T-Virus spread like wildfire, decimating the global population. Mother Earth has set to reclaiming the land, sweeping it clear with vast deserts. Few living survive, mostly as nomads. The Umbrella Corporation thrives in underground bunkers. Their scientists, led by Dr. Isaacs, work tirelessly to use clone Alice’s blood to control the dead and reclaim the surface for human kind. The woman herself? She lives off the grid, so paranoid she can’t make a friend, but still cannot resist the urge to help those in need. A convoy, led by Claire, finds themselves in need of Alice’s special skills. In return, they help her break into the home of the very people hunting her down.
There’s actually quite a bit crammed into this deceptively simple film. It handles touchy topics like Alice’s survivor’s guilt, and the ethics behind using human clones for experimentation. We see a woman, Claire, leading a large group with none of the usual male arrogance costing innocent lives because they can’t be bothered to listen to the little lady. There’s ramifications for Umbrella’s genetic meddling, demonstrated when the arrogant, rich bastards sit down to wring their hands over dwindling supplies while they’re no closer to a solution to the undead problem they created.
But there’s also quite a bit of bullcrap pushing the plot along, like magically appearing undead and male egos.
Dr. Isaacs’ demeanor is much like that weird clump of gunk one collects on their shoes after walking a mile through alleys in the seedier side of the city. There’s no professional ramification for his obsession with Alice, nor does anyone actually stop him from torturing dozens of women. It’s not until the film’s climax when Isaacs is desperate to survive after being bitten that he pays for all his sins. And it isn’t enough to make up for the nauseating male arrogance propelling the character like a shark. Umbrella itself continues on, despite losing Isaacs and his American lab. The only price they pay is the woefully low supplies in their worldwide bases. While there’s some satisfaction in the end for Alice, it’s not the solid win one expects at the end of an action film. The full blame lies with the way the franchise was written early on, forcing each film to flow nearly seamlessly into the other. A stand-alone film would have to deal with Umbrella in a more complete way. It also wouldn’t have shipped off the entire cast, save one, and never follow up. They languished in knowing they could leave an open ending, and that’s not stellar storytelling. Each entry in the series should be written as its own entity. Cliffhangers aren’t actually all that fun.
The undead in the third film were pretty sparse up until the second half. For the most part, we had human foes and infected animals going for Alice’s blood and body. The infected dogs are a personal favorite. We also learn what happens when animals ingest infected meat—the crows proved far more terrifying than their canine counterparts. The avian threat wiped out a large piece of Claire’s convoy in a scene Hitchcock would’ve watched with a grin on his face. And the human infected? Well, much like other RE films, there’s various types of human dead. This time around there’s the mundane infected, like those surrounding the fence protecting the entrance to the Umbrella base, and the Alice-enhanced infected who’re far more aggressive. Makeup applications for the mundane are standard for the franchise—great detail on the hero dead, with just as much attention spent on the background actors so the blend is natural during in-horde shots. What irritated me was when they opted to strip individual characteristics from the enhanced dead, making them all the same angry white guy zombie in a jumper. The reasoning? Stunt work. The enhanced infected swarm what’s left of Vegas during Isaacs’ grand scheme to finally grab the real Alice for testing. In order to film so many simultaneous stunts, using masks instead of fragile prosthetics saved money and time. It also allowed performers to be swapped out at will in order to achieve different physical performances. But it looks bloody awful ten years down the road on a high definition screen. The scalps jiggle. The heads are too big. Try as I might to focus on the foreground fighting, I kept watching the Jell-O headed zombies in the background.
So how does Resident Evil: Extinction compare to the genre offerings which have come since? It fails to adhere to the typical gender roles for zombie flicks, that’s a huge bonus. The plot—a savior type wanders the countryside, helping others while fighting their inner and outer demons—isn’t original, but fit so well within Alice’s story, it’s almost refreshing to escape crowded RE sets in favor of gorgeous desert landscapes. And it’s certainly an improvement over seven seasons of Rick’s people being unable to see zombies in a sparse forest. The personal interactions go deeper than some films—Alice and Carlos’ scenes in particular—without devolving into time-consuming, but not plot advancing, sex. Honestly, the film is solid. I keep trying to poke holes in it, but the problems I found were small enough to ignore. The only real thing showing its age is the trademark glossy computer graphics from the turn of the century, giving every CGI element a wet look even when it wasn’t supposed to be. I give Resident Evil: Extinction four oozing eyeballs out of five—the same rating I gave it ten years ago.
Rated: R (Adult Language, Violence, Drug Use, Nudity)
Starring: Yael Grobglas, Yon Tumarkin, Danielle Jadelyn, and Tom Graziani
Camera gimmicks aside, this is perhaps one of the most unique zombie origin stories I’ve seen in years. It’s not just a random, evolved disease. There’s no shadow government running tests on humanity. Asteroids have nothing to do with spreading a weird virus. For JeruZalem they went back to the religious origins behind mankind’s obsession with the dead rising. Every Rosh Hashanah mankind is judged. This time around, the living fail the test and the dead rise in Jerusalem to punish them.
Tourists Sarah and Rachel are side-tracked from their vacation in Tel Aviv by a handsome anthropologist, Kevin, who suggests they go with him to Jerusalem instead to celebrate the New Year. The trio pack into a hostel run by the charming Omar and his family. Desperate to party, the ladies take Kevin and Omar out to check out the nightlife. We get a taste of the everyday conflicts between the numerous cultures jammed into the city during their escapades. They spend some time flirting with two soldiers, Omar isn’t as welcoming. For the most part, the party scenes are just that, save the splashes of stark reminders that the people living in Jerusalem do so in constant tension with one-another. It’s not until the final day of the celebration when things get weird. Violent news reports dominate the airwaves, which Omar brushed off until it was too late to take action, and too widespread to continue softening the horror for the hostel’s guests. Because they’re so slow to see the undead threat, they’re trapped in the city when it’s put under quarantine. The only way out is through a massive tunnel system; one older gentleman knows the path.
By then, they’ve had a few face-to-face encounters with the undead. These zombies are a hybrid, bringing in more demon than zombie aesthetic to the creature design. They’re rotted humans, but the final evolution includes functional wings, black eyes, and claws. Because this was shot to look like Glass footage, everything in the dark is super grainy, no matter what resolution screen you watch it on. What could’ve been a super neat zombie design is muddied in the shadows. Fight scenes where the undead are close enough to see detail are choppy. Almost all of the latter fights include several minutes where the point-of-view is seriously compromised, there’s no light, or the camera is sideways on the floor. The zombie/demons aren’t the only creature. We get one head-scratching shot of something the locals call a Nephilim. It’s massive, towering over the buildings as it strolls by. Then we kinda forget there’s a huge thing walking through the Old City and continue on.
There’s little to get to know about the characters. They wear it all on their sleeves. Sarah is emotionally scarred from her brother’s death. Rachel is tired of her buzzkill bestie and wants to party. Kevin has a niggling idea about the undead rising, but by the time he thinks past getting in Sarah’s pants, he can’t save anyone. Omar has the most depth of them all, completely stealing the show from the ladies at every turn. This is the kind of film where it’s easy to forget to spend time developing the characters because the writers are so focused on how they’d die. And die they do. We see first-hand how a living soul turns into one of the undead. Which is really ridiculous because it means the main characters knowingly tote an infected person along for the great cave escape. Spoilers: Like any good zombie movie, there’s not much hope for mankind. The ending isn’t that shocking, but does leave fans with a nice sense of dread with the closing shot of a zombie/demon swarm over Jerusalem.
JeruZalem has its faults, it really does. However, I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to watch a zombie-centric film which isn’t set in America, the UK, or Germany. The change in location and culture dictated a change in the story-telling process. Doing something different is a terrifying challenge, one genre filmmakers relish and fans lap up like warm milk—watching the same set of characters doing the same things and running from the same monsters over and over is a drag. This film is not the next NotLD, but I’m giving JeruZalem three-point-five mangled mandibles out of five. I’d add it to a marathon night of found-footage films.
Starring: Dougray Scott, Jessica De Gouw, and Elen Rhys
Here’s something a tad different, yet the movie somehow follows all the checkpoints of a solidly uninventive plot. I grabbed The Rezort to review primarily because it boasted a complete lack of pointless make-out scenes and nudity. Horror movies don’t need sex to make them interesting. Human emotions go far deeper than that. While there’s nothing horribly surprising about how this film’s plot unfolds, there’s a world of nuance in not only how the characters handle a resurgence of the undead outbreak, but it demonstrates how humanity will always manage to shoot itself in the foot when they attempt to drag war-time normality into post-war life.
Melanie survived the zombie war, but it left her an orphan. The emotional damage from years spent scrambling to survive leaves her with PTSD and an inability to move on thanks to nightmares. Someone at her support group suggests immersion therapy, giving her information about The Rezort—an island off the Australian cost filled with undead, where the rich go to pretend they’re brave and safely shoot zombies. She and her boyfriend Lewis, who fought in the zombie war with no obvious mental repercussions, decide to give immersion therapy a try. They’re tossed in with a group of others and off they go into the park, with naught but a few hidden fences keeping them out of real danger.
You see where the plot goes from there. The fences fail after a zombie activist group sneaks a virus into the resort’s computer system and it’s a race to escape before the island is torched by the government in the Brimstone protocol. The characters are, for the most part, prototypes: The Survivor Girl, Her Boyfriend With A Dark Secret, The Warrior Old Guy, The Mindless Morons, The Employee With A Heart, The Clueless Activist, and The Heartless CEO. We never form attachments to them. Hell, most of their names fly over the audience’s head up until their death scene. As each main character bites the dust, it confirms the unoriginal writing process for this script. The only character with soul is Mel, and she is the survivor girl, so we expect her to be an actual character. To show how little effort goes into the characters, it’s not even that satisfying when Vivian, the CEO, is attacked by the zombies she created and imprisoned. Here’s a character who took refugees and turned them into a profit, but without character depth it’s just a fact tossed out to sound interesting right before a death gag featuring numerous zombies tearing a body apart.
Vivian’s actions do lend to some intriguing discussion about what happens when the rich put everything they have during wartime into one venture, and then must move on once they’re found on the winning side of the war. In this case, the Rezort isn’t formed until right after the war. It comes across as a novel way to contain remaining undead while making a buck from a free resource. But what happens when there’s too many keen to relive the “glory days,” where it was marshal law and everyone walked around armed to the teeth? How does one keep up with that kind of demand when the zombie outbreak is under control? Make more zombies, of course. Just use what you have. No one will miss the refugees—a startling statement, but look at Syria. At the cost of the most fragile, the wealthy can have a weekend vacation in paradise. It’s disgusting, and exactly the same mentality countries like the USA currently adopt.
The message in The Rezort is the real take-away here. It’s not the characters having fun or even Mel mistakenly trying to cure her PTSD by participating in forced slavery. It’s the complete lack of care for the human lives affected by the war which is the story. It’s a corporation looking at people who only want to know when they’ll have a home or a full stomach again and determining their lives count for nothing except a paycheck down the line, which should petrify anyone with any concern for their fellow humans. It also just so happens that this film is shot beautifully—except for the opening shaky-cam footage—and has some rather impressive FX makeup for the zombies. Overall, I’m giving The Rezort four oozing eyeballs out of five. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’ll start a conversation about the state of our world.
Everybody Dies in the End: Review for Z Nation 314 by A. Zombie
The episode rolls onto the screen, following The Man and the hounds on his tail, Addy and Doc. The worst babysitters ever get some help from Grandpa, the zombie Lucy sent off on an unknown mission in the last episode. He’s kinda sweet. Too bad the nice guys always bite the big one in the end on this show. Grandpa does a pretty good job of leading Addy and Doc to the Zona base hidden in Mt. Casey. Only one problem: Their backup was last headed toward Puget Sound. They have no clue if and when help will arrive, so Addy makes an executive decision—she’ll climb the mountain without any gear or training; Doc babysits Grandpa. She seriously spends most of the episode uselessly scaling a mountain when the rest just walk in the front door not long after.
Dr. Sun and Roberta cobble together a communication rig and contact Kaya to get an update on The Man’s location. Thank goodness someone is at Northern Lights manning the computers. Citizen Z and Kaya’s uncle have been missing for twelve hours, and there’s not much hope left for their survival. Updated on the change in pick-up locations, the rescue team shifts gear and heads off. They end up stopping again long before reaching the mountain.
All the drugs in 10k’s system were bound to gunk up his system. The serums constantly battle the infection hidden in Murphy’s bite. In a blink, 10k goes from fully functional to each breath coming out a death rattle. By the time Roberta’s team pushes ahead to Mt. Casey, he’s pretty much toast. Only a Hail Mary can pull him from the drug-induced full-body shutdown. Do they really have time to try an experimental procedure on 10k? Not really. Roberta clearly states that Lucy is the priority, but somehow they all wind up playing doctor instead. How do you save a problem like 10k? Same way Dr. Merch accidentally saved Murphy—kill him. Dr. Sun drops the death bomb on Murphy’s reality with no preamble. When the zombies attacked during the original vaccine procedure, Murphy’s heart stopped. He’s been dead for four years and somehow looks better than some people after a week at the spa. Suddenly his brand of living doesn’t seem so bad, so long as one isn’t squeamish about eating brains.
Yet again we almost lose 10k. The doctor’s plan works, thankfully, snatching him from Death’s greedy paws once more. What will the long-term effects be? No clue. We’re not even sure 10k is technically the same kind of undead as Murphy. There’s no clue what balance of vaccines are in his system. If Dr. Sun doesn’t take the opportunity to study him, as well as Murphy and Lucy, she’s insane.
Curing the world will have to wait a little longer.
Roberta, Doc, and Murphy race from 10k’s newly-revived side to intercept The Man and Lucy before their transport arrives on the mountaintop. Being somewhat sane again, and the rational shot-caller since Murphy’s too emotionally compromised to effectively lead the rescue, Roberta attempts to talk The Man down from his plan. Why break up a family which never had a chance to bond? Why torment a child? It takes no time at all for civil debate to end and the bullets to fly. Murphy uses Roberta to distract The Man, shooting him so Lucy can race to his side.
It’s not the reunion anyone anticipated. Yes, Lucy readily embraces her father. Then she hits him. Several times. There’s also quite a bit of yelling about abandonment and her mother. Yada, yada, yada. There’s no time for personal problems with The Man still fully functional. Murphy and Roberta take him on, but he slips their grasp yet again. The Man hits Murphy and Roberta with the same bullet, in that order. If they survive, Roberta’s life will be incredibly different. As will their personal dynamic. There’s always been an almost loving respect from the pair, which strengthened greatly around the time they passed the Grand Canyon. How much will it deepen when they’re mentally connected? Then again, Roberta may buck against the change like 10k has, which resulted in his death and magical resurrection. Murphy or Roberta may die from the gunshot. We don’t know! The episode ends with the Zona aircraft—actually a United States Airforce vehicle from Zone A—firing a weird weapon at everyone on the mountaintop.
Know who’s not on the mountaintop anymore? The Man, because Addy pushes him to get him away from Lucy and the aircraft. Addy herself goes over the edge, too. Then 5k sprints over and jumps after them, wings outstretched like he can actually fly. I don’t even know what’s going on now. If the kid saves Addy, whatever. I’ll buy it. There’s no use over analyzing anything they do on here.
We’ve got the two lead characters bleeding to death. The team’s sniper just died and came back to unlife as a fully functional Blend, or something. They’ve gained a hormonal teenaged girl who can control zombies—except the Zona guards inhabiting the mountain our heroes are trapped atop, who keep turning in droves as their version of the cure fails. Their main fighter fell off a mountain. They did have two new mouths to feed, but now it’s just Red because 5k took a flying leap. Oh, and let’s not forget the impending doom hovering above the crew.
It’s going to be a very, very long wait until season four. I’ve got no clue how they’ll wiggle out of this corner. Though, it’s not as tight as the corner they wrote themselves into when Murphy nuked the entire USA, so it’s doable. Maybe. Hopefully.
Zombie Reviews . . . Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
By A. Zombie
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies delivers a timeless tale, rife with fighting, set in a post-apocalyptic, yet historical era. You can’t deny that it is oddly satisfying to watch a group of accomplished young women mow down a ballroom of zombies with naught but long daggers—which were concealed under their gowns—and some serious martial arts skills. Are there issues meshing the worlds? Of course. In the end, the film is visually satisfying enough to overlook most of it. As a boon, fans of the Pride and Prejudice story still find enough of the source to reconnect with their favorite characters in a whole new way. Or, as is one case, finally come to somewhat like what is possibly the most annoying character in literature.
Sam Riley and Douglas Booth in Screen Gems’ PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES.
The Pride and Prejudice story has enough twists and turns to make it a compelling tale. Adding in the undead posed a particular problem: How to keep the romance in the forefront without compromising a solid story about love’s place in the social structure by changing the setting to the apocalypse. In order to achieve this the quickest way possible, the film doesn’t open with the Bennet ladies and their marriage-worried parents—I will note that post-apocalypse Father Bennet has no interest in wedding off his daughters, only training them to survive. Instead, it begins with Darcy on the hunt for a zombie hiding in the midst of the upper crust. As far as first impressions goes, it’s a pretty sharp introduction. The first zombie isn’t a rotter, held back from the full transformation because he didn’t consume human flesh. Nevertheless, he’s infected and must be dispatched. It’s the first-person point-of-view kill which ruins the scene’s impact. Darcy is cunning and ruthless, then there’s this cheesy head-rolling moment with the camera. When it recovers from the point-of-view shift, the camera pans upstairs to a second, far more detailed zombie before the scene changes. The scene is crammed in before the traditional start to the PaP story, and the outcome of Darcy’s escapade, plus his failure to kill the second zombie, is dragged in again as a way to bring zombies to Bingley’s first party. At least it isn’t a single-purpose moment.
For the most part, the story itself is predictable if one is aware of the source material. There’s very few surprises, like Lady Catherine’s part as a one-eyed, sword-wielding leader in the human forces fighting the dead for control of London and the surrounding countryside. Even Wickham’s true nature, beyond being a cad and a narcissist, isn’t really shocking if one follows the natural progression of how the original book unfolds. I would’ve liked to see more effort to adapt the full story into something different. Lady Catherine remaining on the side of the angels bugs me in particular, seeing as she’s pretty awful to Elizabeth no matter what incarnation of PaP is being told. It would’ve been more shocking for her to side with Wickham over a common undead state than to willingly take in the Bennets, whom she sees as barely above her lady’s maid in social status.
Lily James and Bella Heathcote in Screen Gems’ PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES.
This is one horror film where it’s hard to do what we’re accustomed to: hoping all the lead characters bite the big one. Primarily, PaPaZ is a romance with relatable, quirky characters. The zombie war is there in the background to give Elizabeth and Darcy something to bond over, to put them on equal footing at last. That’s the big difference in this retelling of the classic. Elizabeth isn’t some seemingly-damaged suitcase her parents try to sell Darcy—and any other man without a bride— with no concern for her feelings. Yes, Mrs. Bennet’s marriage obsession plays a huge role in breaking apart the primary couple, as it always does, but it’s not as depressing as usual when looking at what Elizabeth has accomplished without a husband. Her prospects with zombies raiding England are better than they were in the actual historical era, all because their new society saw an education with the key sources far beyond the country’s borders as the only way to survive the menace—looking out to find a way to fix the problems within is something few societies embrace. Her progress in women’s self-empowerment doesn’t stop the entire Parson Collins plot from happening, though. He still arrives, annoys, and marries a Bennet daughter. Only this time around, Collins is somewhat tolerable because Matt Smith made him a bumbling fool, not a man coldly calculating how to sleep his way ahead in Lady Catherine’s good graces. Collins provides another opportunity to sew zombie conflict into the Bennet’s lives, but the potential went unchecked. The writer had a focus; Wickham’s established part as villain would be upheld. But why is he the villain? Why not any of the numerous people in Elizabeth’s life who degraded her for her gender or her place in society? Answer? He took a woman (property in the era) without permission. It’s a trope so old, I really hoped it would remain in the classic story and they’d do something different for the Wickham/Lydia plot.
The zombies in the film range in appearance. For the most part, they’re seen at a distance in groups. Few zombies get the close-up treatment, even fewer actually show grotesque wounds like traditional undead depictions. When the camera does get up close and personal with a zombie, I cringe. The design overall is great. Having undead waltzing around in these grand gowns and waistcoats strikes an oddly-pleasing discord. The illusion blows to pieces when one realizes there’s little practical gore on the actors. Featured dead have digital wounds; presumably to enhance the ick, plus make wounds deeper and move naturally during dialog. However, even the church girls on-screen for all of a minute appear to have digital rot on their cheeks instead of practical makeup. That’s where the design decisions stop making sense and become a headache for genre fans. The film cost enough without making the makeup digital. In a way, it feels we were cheated from a proper zombie battle scene because of the zombie design relying on digital gore. Yes, there’s a rather tense bit toward the end when they finally confront Wickham and the undead at St. Lazarus, but the camera is pulled back. Distance from the main threat in the film leaves the undead with the menace of a mosquito, not a lion hunting the countryside. It robs a little justice from Lydia’s rescue, as well, when there’s no real danger from zombies who are too far away to see clearly.
Overall, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies delivers what it promised: A classic story with zombies wandering in to seriously ruin everyone’s day more than Darcy’s absent sense of humor. Is it a perfect retelling of Austen’s novel? Hell no. Is it a decent zombie flick? Yeah, I’ll give it that. PaPaZ gets four majorly dislocated jaws out of five. Grab the film to enjoy beautiful things covered in blood n guts, stay for the witty snits between Darcy and Elizabeth.
Clive wraps the case, suddenly Liv’s under no geas and is free to express her natural self. This leads me to believe the writers and production team knew the Sweet Lady Pain gimmick was a turd in the punch bowl. Yet they ran with it. For what purpose? To further deride sex workers in pop culture? Yeah, no. This isn’t something they can pass off as, “Oh, well, the brains wear off.” Liv rode Janko’s brain until she collapsed, utilizing the mercenary’s self-control to lock down her emotions after Drake’s final death. That took a while. Liv ditched the leather and whips on day two or three. She didn’t over-exert herself in any fights. Nor was she forced to heal any serious wounds. Both would take extra nutrients to heal, possibly explaining how Liv’s typical meal schedule wouldn’t be sufficient. Or we could just say, the writers messed up. They know they messed up. They went to great lengths to make us forget it by rushing Liv into a narcissist’s brain, therefore pitting her against everyone and causing drama. This is akin to tying shiny paper around nectarine tree limbs as a distraction so the birds won’t take the fruit, but truth is, the birds will always get what they want. What fans want is a show with a woman at the helm who isn’t deliberately knocked down to become the laughing stock in order to cover poor decisions from the production staff. I, for one, will keep checking this tree to see if there’s anything worthwhile to digest. There’s so much potential. It’s trapped behind a messy patriarchal wall, though.
Liv isn’t the only woman on the show getting this flavor of treatment in the writers’ room. Peyton still suffers barbs from Ravi over her personal life, only for every crappy thing he’s said to be proven right so Peyton is obligated to apologize. Apologize to the man so obsessed over who she’s kissing, he hopped in bed with a woman he detests? Are you kidding? But, it happens. This week’s case is centered on the victim, Yvonne, and her affair with a married club owner, with a jealous coworker red herring. Who actually offed the self-centered party girl? The roommate she screwed over. A woman, by the way. Not one of the sexually-motivated angles Clive and Liv investigate produces a lick of information. I dare not go back to count how many of the women who’ve died on the show were given a similar treatment, but off the top of my head it’s already too many. And when the victims themselves aren’t interesting sexually—because of race, weight, age, etc.—a side character, like Rhonda in episode 304, is tapped to fill the position. Could we not?
Major is back to his puppy-dog-esque self after taking the cure. Ravi isn’t as calm. He obsessively tests Major’s memory. He’s so desperate to save his bro, he asks Liv—doped on dingbat brain—to take shifts watching their human-again friend. Which, of course, she doesn’t even bother trying to do. In an attempt to do one last good thing before he loses himself, Major takes an unannounced trip to visit his family. Cue panic. Flailing. And a big ol’ truth bomb dropped on Peyton like a load from a rhino’s backend. Blaine faked it. Well, most of it. The cure does indeed strip memories, but it’s more like a hard reboot than a full wipe. It took a couple days for Blaine to remember his old ways, and he hated it. He hid the truth to start over. Great news for Major, but Blaine’s lies put Peyton in an awful position yet again.
Dr. Isaacs’ demeanor is much like that weird clump of gunk one collects on their shoes after walking a mile through alleys in the seedier side of the city. There’s no professional ramification for his obsession with Alice, nor does anyone actually stop him from torturing dozens of women. It’s not until the film’s climax when Isaacs is desperate to survive after being bitten that he pays for all his sins. And it isn’t enough to make up for the nauseating male arrogance propelling the character like a shark. Umbrella itself continues on, despite losing Isaacs and his American lab. The only price they pay is the woefully low supplies in their worldwide bases. While there’s some satisfaction in the end for Alice, it’s not the solid win one expects at the end of an action film. The full blame lies with the way the franchise was written early on, forcing each film to flow nearly seamlessly into the other. A stand-alone film would have to deal with Umbrella in a more complete way. It also wouldn’t have shipped off the entire cast, save one, and never follow up. They languished in knowing they could leave an open ending, and that’s not stellar storytelling. Each entry in the series should be written as its own entity. Cliffhangers aren’t actually all that fun.
The episode rolls onto the screen, following The Man and the hounds on his tail, Addy and Doc. The worst babysitters ever get some help from Grandpa, the zombie Lucy sent off on an unknown mission in the last episode. He’s kinda sweet. Too bad the nice guys always bite the big one in the end on this show. Grandpa does a pretty good job of leading Addy and Doc to the Zona base hidden in Mt. Casey. Only one problem: Their backup was last headed toward Puget Sound. They have no clue if and when help will arrive, so Addy makes an executive decision—she’ll climb the mountain without any gear or training; Doc babysits Grandpa. She seriously spends most of the episode uselessly scaling a mountain when the rest just walk in the front door not long after.
All the drugs in 10k’s system were bound to gunk up his system. The serums constantly battle the infection hidden in Murphy’s bite. In a blink, 10k goes from fully functional to each breath coming out a death rattle. By the time Roberta’s team pushes ahead to Mt. Casey, he’s pretty much toast. Only a Hail Mary can pull him from the drug-induced full-body shutdown. Do they really have time to try an experimental procedure on 10k? Not really. Roberta clearly states that Lucy is the priority, but somehow they all wind up playing doctor instead. How do you save a problem like 10k? Same way Dr. Merch accidentally saved Murphy—kill him. Dr. Sun drops the death bomb on Murphy’s reality with no preamble. When the zombies attacked during the original vaccine procedure, Murphy’s heart stopped. He’s been dead for four years and somehow looks better than some people after a week at the spa. Suddenly his brand of living doesn’t seem so bad, so long as one isn’t squeamish about eating brains.
It’s not the reunion anyone anticipated. Yes, Lucy readily embraces her father. Then she hits him. Several times. There’s also quite a bit of yelling about abandonment and her mother. Yada, yada, yada. There’s no time for personal problems with The Man still fully functional. Murphy and Roberta take him on, but he slips their grasp yet again. The Man hits Murphy and Roberta with the same bullet, in that order. If they survive, Roberta’s life will be incredibly different. As will their personal dynamic. There’s always been an almost loving respect from the pair, which strengthened greatly around the time they passed the Grand Canyon. How much will it deepen when they’re mentally connected? Then again, Roberta may buck against the change like 10k has, which resulted in his death and magical resurrection. Murphy or Roberta may die from the gunshot. We don’t know! The episode ends with the Zona aircraft—actually a United States Airforce vehicle from Zone A—firing a weird weapon at everyone on the mountaintop.
For the most part, the story itself is predictable if one is aware of the source material. There’s very few surprises, like Lady Catherine’s part as a one-eyed, sword-wielding leader in the human forces fighting the dead for control of London and the surrounding countryside. Even Wickham’s true nature, beyond being a cad and a narcissist, isn’t really shocking if one follows the natural progression of how the original book unfolds. I would’ve liked to see more effort to adapt the full story into something different. Lady Catherine remaining on the side of the angels bugs me in particular, seeing as she’s pretty awful to Elizabeth no matter what incarnation of PaP is being told. It would’ve been more shocking for her to side with Wickham over a common undead state than to willingly take in the Bennets, whom she sees as barely above her lady’s maid in social status.
The zombies in the film range in appearance. For the most part, they’re seen at a distance in groups. Few zombies get the close-up treatment, even fewer actually show grotesque wounds like traditional undead depictions. When the camera does get up close and personal with a zombie, I cringe. The design overall is great. Having undead waltzing around in these grand gowns and waistcoats strikes an oddly-pleasing discord. The illusion blows to pieces when one realizes there’s little practical gore on the actors. Featured dead have digital wounds; presumably to enhance the ick, plus make wounds deeper and move naturally during dialog. However, even the church girls on-screen for all of a minute appear to have digital rot on their cheeks instead of practical makeup. That’s where the design decisions stop making sense and become a headache for genre fans. The film cost enough without making the makeup digital. In a way, it feels we were cheated from a proper zombie battle scene because of the zombie design relying on digital gore. Yes, there’s a rather tense bit toward the end when they finally confront Wickham and the undead at St. Lazarus, but the camera is pulled back. Distance from the main threat in the film leaves the undead with the menace of a mosquito, not a lion hunting the countryside. It robs a little justice from Lydia’s rescue, as well, when there’s no real danger from zombies who are too far away to see clearly.