Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015)

Director: Zach Lipovsky

Starring: Jesse Metcalfe, Meghan Ory, Virginia Madsen

A group of people fight to survive in a zombie-infested town.

‘Dead Rising: Watchtower’ is everything you expect from a zombie film: bloody, gory, violent, and disgusting. While there’s a lot to like about the film, there’s a lot I didn’t like about the film.

I know Jesse Metcalfe is supposed to be the film’s hero, Chase Carter, but for most part he’s just a hapless idiot who mostly runs away from everything, or hide. Meghan Ory was by far the film’s strongest and most interesting character, Crystal. Rob Riggle starred as the film’s comic relief character, Frank West. Boy, the film would have done so much better without this character! Whenever he was on screen, he completely ruined every inch of suspense there might have been. His TV interview was comical and childish and attributed greatly to why I won’t be watching this film again.

It was interesting to see a zombie film where there’s actually medication (Zombex) to control your condition if bitten by a zombie. The suspense is elevated by Crystal, having been bitten by a zombie, and running our of Zombex. The film gets involved in much more than just zombies. However, ultimately it just wasn’t enough to blow me away, and at times it felt the film tried dealing too many cards at once. The antagonist, Logan (Aleks Paunovic) was so forced into being the antagonist among all the zombies, it was annoying. His character wasn’t believable and nothing we haven’t seen before. Whenever Chase tried something heroic, it was either unbelievable or just stupid. This character was bland and certainly not hero material.

If you’re into the zombie genre, there are far better zombie films out there.

Would I watch it again? No.