Film Review: DEAD RISING: WATCHTOWER (2015)

 DEAD RISING: WATCHTOWER (2015) USA 1hr 58mins 

Director: Zach Lipovsky

"Only an idiot wants to see a zombie" - Crystal O'Rourke

"How much hope do you have? You're basically fucked!" - Frank West

I am not much of a gamer myself but I am aware of the DEAD RISING games and I appreciate this movies nods to them and the video game style camera work. It's helpful to know that you don't need to have much knowledge about the games to get what is going on in the movie. Having done a bit of research though I did find out that DEAD RISING: WATCHTOWER (2015) is set in between games 2 & 3 in terms of timeline. It follows journalist Chase Carter (Jesse Metcalfe) and his camera woman Jordan (Keegan Connor Tracy) as they unwittingly uncover a major government/military conspiracy against the citizens of East Mission, Oregon, whilst filming what seemed at first to be a fairly normal day post numerous zombie apocalypses. Filming at an evacuation point as reports of a zombie virus kick off again is fairly standard practise these days and has been for several years as people have learned to live with zombie outbreaks... hell, people who have been bitten have even been cured (as such) and remain human by taking daily doses of a vaccine called Zombrex.  Chase witnesses first hand that the Zombrex is no longer working and people are now turning all over the camp as they get bitten or turn by themselves having not received their dose of Zombrex. Thoughts turn to a new Zombrex resistant strain of the virus as the population of East Mission swiftly become the walking dead. Split from Jordan, Chase and one of the refugees at the camp Crystal (Meghan Ory) escape into the city with a distraught mother, Maggie (Virginia Madsen), who had just lost her daughter. They set about trying to survive the numerous marauding hordes and biker gangs whilst trying to send out reports about the vaccine. They at first begin to speculate that rather than a new strain of the virus this could instead be a faulty batch of vaccines. Little does Chase know what is going on back at the gates of the quarantine zone where Jordan finds herself more in danger from the authorities than the zombies!

I guess DEAD RISING: WATCHTOWER  (2015) can be considered one of your more standard zombie action movies of the time, god knows there were a lot of zombie B movies coming out around this time that were all very similar,  but with this there are a few small sub plots going on throughout which keeps it flowing quite nicely. The decision to throw you straight into the action in the opening sequence and then taking you back to the beginning works really well in this instance. It's balls to the wall all action opener draws you straight in and leaves you totally open to go with whatever comes next. The characters are not awful, they may all be a little bit too good looking to be normal people but aside from being a tad insipid, personality wise they are not that annoying and are well acted by all involved. They try to inject some humour by having a link to a news studio who are following Chase and the events unfolding about the recent outbreak and have invited Frank West, who was the original survivor of the first outbreak according to the first DEAD RISING game. Played by comedian Rob Riggle (THE HANGOVER (2009)) who is basically there to just be weird and slightly unhinged. I think this is supposed to be funny but for me, most of it falls flat. If fighting through hordes of undead isn't enough they introduce a kind of feral biker gang to the mix as a further threat but they too seem a little unnecessary until we get towards the end. I like to think of it as a nod to DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) but it certainly isn't as effective. The rest of the movie is played fairly straight but it is obvious who we are meant to be routing for and who the bad guys are. 

The zombies are very cool though and there are plenty of them. They play their zombie trump card very early on though. Featuring a zombie clown as one of the main zombies in the opening high action sequence they kind of blow their big moment almost instantly but I guess he was also heavily featured in the trailer so it's probably best they get the big reveal out of the way as soon as possible and move on. He is awesome though. Another great plus point to the zombies is that they are the slow shambling type which is great especially when a lot of other zombie movies at the time where all about the fast types. Sometimes they do use this to draw out some of the escapes which went on a bit too long at times. There are some great stunts, FX, inventive weapons and kills. The zombie clown and his cop friend at the start have weapons which they try to make use of. The cop haphazardly firing a gun (Bub did it better) and the clown wielding an an axe. There are quite a few chainsaws, circular saws, garden implements and swords with limbs and heads flying and a fair bit of blood flowing. There are a couple of shock moments with Maggie and her daughter and a brief shot of a zombie wondering around chowing down on his toddler who was strapped to the front of him (the ultimate takeaway!) that might just satisfy the gore hounds but do they go far enough? For me, the zombies and the action hold my attention enough and keep me well entertained and at almost two hours long you don't really notice it dragging but I'm pretty certain it would have been just as effective if they had cut it down a little.

I appreciate the different plot lines especially as they all culminate together for a big, bold finale. The fleeting nods to some classics are noted but not really thought out much and the video game shooter POV's are great. It is certainly not awful at all but at the same time it doesn't try hard enough to be a great zombie movie. It is simply a pop corn , beer, no brainer kind of movie which we all need from time to time. I score DEAD RISING: WATCHTOWER (2015) a solid 3 brains out of 5.

DEAD RISING: WATCHTOWER (2015) is available on dvd and blu ray both on its own and as a boxset with it's sequel DEAD RISING: ENDGAME (2016) which will be our next featured review.