The sequel to 2015’s Dead Rising: Watchtower starts with
a short credits recap of the first one, but seemingly assumes you’ve either
seen the earlier film and paid attention to what happened or bought this for a
few pounds for an undemanding night’s entertainment and don’t really care about
further details. It’s the continuing
adventures of reporter Chase Carter.
He’s learned that the army are complicit in releasing and exacerbating a
zombie plague in the fictional city of East Mission.
After surviving the city first time around, he lost
his friend to the conspiracy and is determined to reveal the truth to the
world. This leads him back in and into
contact with an ex-employee of the company responsible for the virus, who wants
Chase’s help to stop the army murdering 1.5 million people who have chips in
them that slow the virus down. Or
something.
It doesn’t really matter. This is modern zombie movie cliché
central. Conspiracy blah blah zombies
blah blah let’s call them another name because that’s what people do these days
blah blah Z’s blah freaking blah.
Characters explain the been-there-before plot to anyone that cares, and
then fight (zombies or other people) for a bit, then run around, rinse
repeat. It rarely resembles the game
series that inspired it, but often resembles innumerable other films of its
ilk.
Dead Rising the computer game was generally a blast. Inspired by classics from the genre and with
some pretty out there gameplay it was a good time. This movie is not a good time. Like most stuff these days it treats a fairly
ridiculous idea too seriously. The
chances of zombies actually happening is so unlikely for so many perfectly good
reasons that make it impractical, you just wish once someone would go proper
Fulci on us again instead of this attempt at ‘realism’. You know, flesh eating with a capital F for
fun.
Written by a committee and populated by actors like
That Woman from That Film and That Dude from That Film, there’s no one to
engage with or care about. Billy Zane
pops up as a loony scientist for a few minutes.
Dennis Haysbert is in it. Ian
Tracey (so great in the CBC’s Intelligence some years back) is in
it. Actors have to make a living though
too, so you can’t blame ‘em too much.
For what it is, there are many more badly made films
than Dead Rising: Endgame. If you
just love any zombie movie, want some obvious CGI gore and aren’t too bothered
about anything else, go for it. Fans of
the game won’t recognise much in this.
For anyone else, there’s much more out there worth your time.
DEAD RISING: ENDGAME / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: PAT WILLIAMS / SCREENPLAY: TIM CARTER / STARRING: JESSE METCALFE, KEEGAN CONNOR TRACY, JESSICA HARMON, DENNIS HAYSBERT / RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 31ST
