Movie Review: ‘Dead Again’ – Now Out On Amazon Prime

 
 
Dead Again…where to start?
 
When I sat down to watch writer-director Steven M. Smith’s zombie/alien movie Dead Again I had high hopes, after all, the trailer looked decent. I mean the movie is being described as “Hot Fuzz meets Shaun of the Dead,” so it has to be good, right? My high hopes lasted all of five minutes.
 
As we meet our main characters, two cops played by Tony Fadil and Elliot Cable, they are having a conversation about movies. Soon they get a call about intruders at a closed hospital where they find a couple noising around. It’s not long before the place is swarmed by zombies or are they, zombies? Zombie/aliens, zomiens? You see, aliens are attacking the world.
 
The film is supposed to be funny? Campy? Hell, I don’t know. Instead what we get are lines and scenes that aren’t funny enough to be funny or campy enough to be campy.
 
Dead Again‘s cinematography is a mixed bag of odd filters, shaky cam, and the occasional decent shot. The aliens’ presence is shown with a red filter and what I’m guessing is a sparkler being dangled above it.  My first clue that this wasn’t going to be a great flick is that there is zero effort put into the zombies. There is absolutely no makeup or special effects on the zombies whatsoever. They are just regular people roaming around with a little blood splashed on them. But here’s the thing, they use CGI on everything else. CGI UFOs, check. CGI gunshots, check. CGI blood, check. The entire budget looks like it went to CGI, leaving the zombies looking like an afterthought. The way the movie looks isn’t the only bad thing. The dialogue is horrible, and most of the acting was terrible, and not in a funny way.
 
I get some movies are just so bad they’re good, but this one is just bad. The only redeeming quality I could find about this movie is that nods to classic horror movies are said throughout it, unfortunately, they are just way too obvious about bringing them up.
 
If you really feel the need to see this trainwreck for yourself, it’s out on Prime now. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.