Uh.. Ok lets start with the plot.. here’s the official blurb:
Three months have passed since a viral outbreak wiped out 99.9% of the world’s population, turning its victims into flesh-eating living dead. In the UK, a surviving band of soldiers and civilians have taken refuge at a rural military barracks. Life in this new world is tough and brutal, but hope appears when a high level communication is received from a military base on the coast, telling of sanctuary elsewhere in Europe… But just as salvation appears to be in reach, the base suffers an overwhelming defeat at the hands of the living dead! The surviving handful of troops and civilians must now make their way to the coast to uncover the truth behind the message. Their perilous journey takes them across a now treacherous, death-ravaged landscape, where the living dead are vast in number and wandering bandits impose their own malicious sense of law and order. What follows is a journey into hell and a desperate battle against all odds for the very survival of the human race.
Sounds fairly decent right? But the execution is severely lacking considering the $1,500,000 budget.
Shot in a hand-held style, which I’m a big fan of, you’d forgive the occasional badly framed shot but with World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 the effect feels more like a distraction instead of creating an immersive world.
The zombies aren’t too convincing and never really seem to present that much danger… it’s the living that pose the greatest threat in this movie and the filmmakers go to extreme lengths to make that clear, resulting in an attempt to shock that just fails.
And don’t even get me started on the DVD cover, posted above. It creates a false impression of the movie. If you’re expecting to see a city overrun with zombies and an epic battle for survival, you won’t.
In all, the movie is a letdown and fails to engage.
Director: Michael Bartlett
Staring: Josh Myers, Alix Wilton Regan, Russell Jones and Rob Oldfield
