Saturday, August 17, 2013

"Zombie Warz: Falls The Shadow" - - What If You Filmed A Zombie Movie . . .



And no zombies showed up?

It's hard to figure out where to start this review because there are so many odd things in play here. But the fact that it is called "Zombie Warz" but there are maybe only ten zombies in the whole film is probably a good place to begin.

It's not just that there are no zombies seen. I can understand that some movies don't have the budget for huge waves of undead hordes. The zombie movie "Ashes" doesn't feature any zombies until the very end, but it is still a zombie movie because throughout the film what keeps the plot moving is the virus. It affects the characters interactions with each other and how they react to the world.

But in "Zombie Warz," the characters never really talk about zombies. It's almost like a subplot if even that. The movie could have been about the world after a pandemic, or an economic collapse, and it would have been the same narrative. It feels like the zombies were just added in as a marketing gimmick.

More proof of this is the fact that after I watched it, I looked this film up on IMDB. Apparently, it came out in 2011 under the title "Falls The Shadow" (which really just reminds me of "Sonic The Hedgehog" more than anything). It was just recently released with the "Zombie Warz" title probably to get zombie fans like me to watch it.

Another crazy thing about this movie is it's broken. I've seen bad movies before but this movie actually has the subtitles for a completely different film.




















In this scene, a black woman is being burned at the stake while a bunch of hillbillies cheer. The first half of the movie has subtitles like "Sir Beautiful, Sir Beautiful", "The Head is dead but we still have enemies like flies" and my favorite:




















Yes. "We must celebrate our victory! (Disco Music)" is the best subtitle I've ever seen in a movie about rednecks trying to rebuild post-zombie apocalypse America. I have no idea how this subtitle glitch could have happened and I've looked to see if any of these quotes are from other movies but I've come up blank so far.

And since we're on the topic of rednecks, this movie wants you to know it hates racism. It really thinks racism is bad. Now, I know that's a bold statement to make. The filmmakers obviously wanted to let the world know their stance on bigots even if is risky to take such a polarizing view. The bad guy is a religious zealot based on Reverend Fred Phelps, the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church. How do I know that?

The bad guy's name is Reverend Phelps. Wow, that's some cutting edge social commentary!

We also see that the bad guys flag is not only a Confederate flag but it is also emblazoned with the swastika. Although why it is the traditional swastika and not the Nazi's inverted swastika they never explain. Maybe they're so racist the swastika spun around? Who knows? Who cares?




















(The movie ends with Reverend Phelps being strangled to death with that Confederate/Swastika, or Confestika flag. You know, because in a zombie movie how else would you kill the main bad guy?)

"Zombie Warz: Falls The Shadow" is beautifully shot. The cinematography is gorgeous and I hope that the filmmakers involved do go on to make better movies. But between the lack of zombies, the overly simplistic characters, and the unheard of technical glitches, this movie is a definite pass.

11 comments:

  1. Mr. Carpenter,

    Thanks for watching our film. We appreciate you taking the time to blog about it too.

    I wanted you to know that the subtitle anomaly is being looked into. The DVDs were not even authored with a "subtitle" option. The duplication lab is being notified by Hannover House (our domestic distributor). Redbox will be notified, as well. We may, at a later date, ask for the kiosk location that you rented from. That way, that rogue disc will be removed from circulation. We certainly did not produce the film with those subtitles. We have checked several locations locally and contacted fans out of state, no one else is reporting this problem. To say the least, we are perturbed about it. Thank you for the "heads up".

    Wishing you well.
    Sincerely,

    Ron Berryessa - Producer
    Dangerous Muse Productions

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    1. Sure, any information you need let me know. To be specific, it is when "Closed Captioning" is enabled, either on the TV set I was watching it on as well as my computer (Clear Fi Player) when I took the screen shots. I watch most of my movies with either subtitles or Closed Captions and have not seen this problem before.

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    2. Just be honest and admit you watched a pirated version online as you do with most of your movies.

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    3. You can duplicate the captions following the steps I provided if you don't believe me. The steps are listed above and I rented the movie from Redbox. If they are renting pirated DVDs then that is an issue that needs to be brought up with Redbox.

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  2. so thats why i cant find it

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  3. I also rented the movie from redbox. I am watching it as we speak and the sub titles DO EXIST and no they don't match the movie.

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  4. We have no subs but it wouldnt work on our xbox. It thinks its a pirated disc. We got it from redbox. It will only play on our dvd player...

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  5. it wasn't that bad, but i never use subtitles unless the movie is not in english.....it was a very low budget film, and if you become acustomed to low budget films, you can overlook a lot a issues that money would solve....the racist stuff was rather "stock bad religious nut" characters, and it wouldve been nice to have something more original or less used, and a couple of the actors just didn't do a very good job of acting....ok, a couple of the actors were really bad, but the other actors did a nice job. not as good as romero's zombie movies, or as good as "warm bodies" or "exit humanity" or "zombie land", but better than "zombies vs. strippers".....and better than "zombie diaries"

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    Replies
    1. You know, I haven't watched "Zombies Vs. Strippers" yet, and I enjoyed parts of "Zombie Diaries" but the sequel was bad. And yeah, these guys did a great job for the amount of money they had and the film quality looked amazing. Like I said at the end, I hope to see other films by these guys. From what I gathered online this was a student film/grad school film. Steven Berryessa wrote, directed, and edited this film and has a bright future in the industry (hopefully). It's just this particular film wasn't for me.

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  6. Hey nice article I enjoyed reading your post - Zombie Warz Falls The Shadow" - - What If You Filmed A Zombie Movie . . . Keep it up.

    ReplyDelete