THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

The small town of Amityville is flung into chaos after a freak chemical explosion causes acid rain in the area. The rain not only burns the flesh of anyone it touches but also turns them into Zombies - cannibalistic ghouls ready to eat the flesh of the living. It is up to Sergeant Dash and a handful of other officers to fend off the attacks and defend their colleagues until the cataclysm subsides.

MY VERDICT:

I won't lie, I did not have high hopes for this low-budget Zombie flick and, after viewing, it's far worse than I imagined; Amityville Uprising is a fairly boring drawn-out movie that seems unwilling to begin any meaningful purpose and, when it does, is unsure what to do next. To start with, the first 30 to 40 minutes of the, already quite short, movie are simply showing small-town life in the town of Amityville - nothing really happens, the characters are introduced but that is all. The acting through this first section varies; none of it goes beyond average though which is a disappointment, and, sadly, it only minorly picks-up towards the end of the film. It's in this final section that the Zombies show up and I use the word "Zombies" lightly; they are more like possessed people, in keeping with the demonic nature of the film's setting in Amityville, New York - some of them hiding from flashlight beams, walking bent-over, on all fours, Exorcist-style, or lurking motionless in corners. Their behaviour at the very end of the film is truly bizarre though as they all reach forward while not moving, as if they want to get at the human in front of them but are held back by an invisible barrier - something that was clearly put into the film simply to stop the ending to from falling apart, not that it is anything worth saving. You see, up until this latter half of the movie, there has not been any plot or storyline but now, thankfully, it is revealed; the one cop whose son was forced upon him as a matter of unfortunate timing must battle through the Zombie infested police station to save his helpless child and the other two surviving officers must, out of seer good will, help him - flimsy at best but at least now there is some 'point' to the film. This extremely lightweight, 'go from A to B' narrative leads right up to the end of the movie; you've waited a large amount of time through a fairly mundane film, lacking much action, with an extremely thin plot, and when you finally think that the action is going to ramp up, the Zombies have reached dangerous numbers, the characters have armed up but only two remain, one of them has a major reason to go on an undead killing spree, they are trapped by the hordes, it's getting tense - BAM, cut to black, roll credits. The movie ends so abruptly and so inadequately, it really is the final nail in the coffin for a film that ends as well as it starts... badly.