Dawning of the Dead formerly known as Apocalypse but changed for obvious reasons, namely to find similarities to the popularity to The Walking Dead and of course Dawn of the Dead (1978 & 2004), then with the passing of George A. Romero, all attract the hungry zombie fans. The newer poster generates a better concept than the original, however the execution of the film leaves much to waste, though the ambition of the filmmakers and passion to the film shows great strides. This flick had five directors attach to it, however it makes sense in a moment, Tony Jopia (Cute Little Buggers (2017)) serves as the main director, with Nika Braun, Clara Loedel, Yannis Zafeiriou, and Alexander Zwart as segment directors, this is not an anthology flick, rather they filmed events set in places such as United States and Tel Aviv. Now as for writers far more complex, with seven writers and sadly nearly impossible to name they all, however Stuart W. Bedford credited with the screenplay. Jopia’s movie mirrors certain portions of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead then thrown in a snippet of Night of the Living Dead and cannot forget the connections to 28 Days Later, and found distribution through Uncork’d Entertainment.

A newscaster Katya Nevin (Ruth Galliers) with a traumatic past fights to reunite with her lover as a global epidemic unleashes zombies at her W.W. News TV studio, this actually the most clear cut plot though a lot of things happen during the flick. As she prepares to return to the airwaves, encouraged by her assistant and boyfriend Alex (Kristofer Dayne), she reinforces her pride to go out get the story regardless of personal costs. Therefore, before the zombie epidemic hits, three stories emerge all swirling around Katya. First, the Professor Greg Laborde (Ian Saynor) responsible for the zombies entrusts her (to unleash the truth via a flash drive), although at this point does it really matter, no, but a moral reasoning needed. Later she’s avoiding well-timed but seriously missed bullets from two agents Proteus and Ashcroft (Leo Gregory and Andrew McHale) who need to stop the evidence release, why everyone is dying and communication with society also ending. Lastly, the journey of her boyfriend, Alex and his brother Christian (Fabien Muller), arguing the entire time to rescue her through a zombie horde spreading up a news tower building. Now of course other aspects exist, from a hodgepodge of mismatch stereotypes and personalities, and battle to survive the zombies’ assault. A new world of zombies swarm greatly, many extras and tons of cool makeup design, and a nice touch of showing the plague taking over different cities all via news programs, though no clear indication of how it spread it so quickly.

Tony Jopia, really gives everything to this production with a minuscule budge, and yet incorporated a car chase with a stunt, poor explosions and multiple locations and tons of gore, in fact a scene which pays tribute Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (1992) (look for it)! This movie generates a great amount of violence, and the classic killing found in larger productions of zombie flicks, with nasty gut tearing, intestine munching, organ devouring blood splatter. Gore hounds and splatter punks rejoice in this savagery even at times a tad cheesy, but least some fun even with lines from other horror flicks and campy acting working silly dialogue and plot logic.

Entertaining amount of good ‘ole blood, guts, and gore, smeared everything and everyone, with more absurdity, a convoluted screenplay, yet it all goes nice together and able to sit back enjoy it all. After all, in the subgenre of zombie movies, such an abundance exists, many hallowed out corpses, but even with an unoriginal title this film gives the audience something to chew on.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3332282/

IMDb Rating: 4.5/10

Baron’s Rating: 5.2/10