Hey, look at this, our first zombie movie! *presses play* Hey, look at this, our first expository news
sequence!
And you’ve got to have the informational session right up front with these zombie apocalypse movies, because there are so many zombie varietals. Are these virus-infected zombies or supernatural
undead ones? Are bites fatal? Is zombie blood contagious? Can they run?
etc. etc. In The Rezort, we are told promptly that the zombies
for this particular exercise are virus types that can turn you with a bite, but
not with their blood, because the virus lives in zombie saliva (!). Also these zombies can run, but when they get old, they regress to the
more respectable and august shamble.
This is a nice wrinkle, because as the movie goes along, you’ll see a
fast zombie and you think, aww, he’s just a cute young’n zombie, he hasn’t had
his hopes and dreams beaten down by an uncaring world. Look at him go! It’s like he thinks he can make a difference!
But at the beginning of The
Rezort, all you’ve got are slow zombies.
This is because it has been years since the Great Zombie War. The only zombies still around are housed in
the Rezort, an exclusive club that’s like one-half Sandals and one-half urban
combat simulation. For a hefty price,
jet-setting elites can come to pump bullets into the hordes of zombies that are,
for no explained reason, still on the island.
It’s a really smart business plan that everybody is talking about, and the tough-as-nails director of The Rezort is the new hot commodity for
having such vision. “But how is this
plan sustainable given that there are only a finite number of zombies on the
island?” asks no one during the first half of the movie. Oh, and by the way, there’s a refugee camp
next door. Just had to get that out
there in case it becomes important later on in the movie.
Expository sequence over, we are introduced to our ragtag
group of resort guests. At the center is
Melanie (Jessica De Gouw), who is only on the trip at the recommendation of her
doctor as a treatment for her PTSD from the war. She’s reluctant, but she’s trying to save her
relationship with her partner Lewis (Martin McCann), so they both go.
Then there’s two teenage videogame dorks who
won their trip through a contest.
There’s a grizzled man with a secret.
And a young blonde woman with purple highlights who is reluctant to shoot zombies. The final member of the group is the Asian
guide in red-camouflage cargo shorts.
One of these is a saboteur.
Can you guess who it is? Oh, it’s
not a secret. It’s the purple highlights
woman. We know because we see her
walking into the “high-security” area and then typing in a password that she
keeps, high-tech espionage style, written on the palm of her hand.
Unaware, the whole group goes out on their safari-like
trip but then runs into trouble when the resort’s security system goes down and
zombies get out everywhere. Our
reluctant saboteur looks pretty guilty.
But she didn’t mean to hack the security system, she thought she was
just gathering data for anti-zombie-resort activists. She was double-crossed ! And now the whole group has to make it to the
extraction point in two hours before the whole island is blown up. You would think that they would be in a
hurry. You would be as wrong as red camo
cargo shorts.
From here on out, the movie is a loose series of chase and
hide sequences during which the members of the group die one-by-one. Keeping the stereotype alive, the two
non-white characters die first. But as
the group starts to get both smaller and whiter, some interesting group
dynamics start to happen. Melanie starts
to drift away from Lewis, who seems less appealing to her after he shoots the
Asian guy in the head and yells “euthanasianed!” No, he doesn't actually say that. Instead he pleads something to the effect of
“But he was infected!” But the damage is done. Melanie senses something off with Lewis, the faintest whiff of a plot twist in
the balmy resort air. Plus, there’s the
hunky grizzled guy who is just as capable with the firearms as Lewis, but seems
on the whole less enthusiastic about thinning out the ethnic minorities.
I’m SO not being fair to Lewis, but was
Melanie? WAS SHE?
But I was so camouflaged! |
The remaining members of the group make it to the
underground passage, where they discover that the resort has been getting their
zombies from the refugee camp, killing them, and then aging the zombies in an underground, artisanal zombie cellar! Lewis finally flips out and abandons Melanie
and the grizzled guy, but then gets bit.
Irony reigns as Melanie is put into Lewis’s previous position regarding that
whole killing your infected friend business.
Is she now going to shoot him when she has had him in the doghouse this
whole time for doing the same thing?
Nope! Melanie shows
him how it’s done. She gives him the gun so he has to kill
himself. I’m not sure if this is
supposed to be more ethical than what he did, or whether it’s supposed to be
more cruel (like, how dare you abandon us, now you have to do this yourself, I’m
done picking up after you, washing your dirty drawers, shooting you in your
zombie infected head, etc. etc.). It’s
the most passive aggressive break-up scene ever. Here’s a gun, honey, I'm sure even you can figure
out how to kill yourself with it.
At the end, Melanie has to run through a giant crowd of
zombies. And they take really poor
pursuit angles. If I were a zombie football
coach, I’d really get on them about this.
Melanie escapes by jumping off a cliff into the ocean,
exposes the resort’s genocidal corruption (though one sort of wonders about the
value of this exposure given that the whole island has been firebombed), and
then leaves us with the message: “I know what's going to happen next. I think we all do.”
I found this strange because I really didn’t know what was going to
happen next, though apparently it is the second zombie war, the zombies having
swum off the island, I think. But how
did we all know it? I didn’t know it! Why wasn’t it in the expository opening
sequence?
The Rezort is not
great, but there’s a good movie in there somewhere. The acting ain’t all bad, and there are a few
stellar one-liners, like “every apocalypse deserves an after party!” And the every
institution is corrupt ending has a unique anti-moral: the resort is
corrupt, but so is the refugee aid society AND the anti-resort activists. ANARCHY IN THE U.K.! Oh, did I mention that the film was
British? If the accents and the anarchic
outlook didn’t tip you off, the loving and lingering romance the film carries
on with all things firearm might have.
In the end, The Rezort
is like a zombie that hasn’t been properly aged. Its action is hectic and satisfying, but lacks
that superannuated zombie gravitas, you know?
Also, even though there’s enough money for matching red camo shorts and
a matching set of company jeeps, it
just isn’t enough to take it all the way to Jurassic
Park (which is its spiritual father, or step-father, or unconcerned sperm
donor). You can see the seams,
especially during the long trek, as the movie devolves into the characters
fighting their way across a series of unconnected sets. Jungle set.
Dungeon set. Refugee camp
set. Control room set. Waiting room set. Cliff set.
All completely different, and all separated merely by closed doors.
Now, where’s the door to get me out of this review? Oh, hey, it’s right here!
Questions for Joe:
1. What do you think zombie researchers would find
most fascinating about these zombies? My
guess is that there would be a lot of papers in leading science journals
published on the hiding and jumping-out-at-you behavior.
JD: I've always held that zombies are better doors than windows, but that theory was completely debunked!
JD: I've always held that zombies are better doors than windows, but that theory was completely debunked!
Spoiler alert: That zombie door is BAD. My research is ruined!
2. Your
thoughts on the computer virus? Didn’t
it look a bit like a mid-90s pop-up ad hell one occasionally stumbles into in
the less reputable districts of the internet?
JD: I know exactly what she is thinking right here:
And that is "GMILFS....how could you?"
JD: I know exactly what she is thinking right here:
And that is "GMILFS....how could you?"
3. Which was more convenient to the plot: the
truck breaking down at just the wrong time or the grizzled dude mysteriously surviving without explanation?
JD: I think the thing that was most convenient was the fact that she was able to escape the zombies and the bombing by jumping into the water. Oh wait, no, that was completely reasonable because they were on an island. She could have jumped into the water at literally any time.
JD: I think the thing that was most convenient was the fact that she was able to escape the zombies and the bombing by jumping into the water. Oh wait, no, that was completely reasonable because they were on an island. She could have jumped into the water at literally any time.
4. What would parents do at the Rezort? What kind of options do you think it had for
families?
JD: "Got four kids? Really only want two? Do we have the DEAL for YOU!"
JD: "Got four kids? Really only want two? Do we have the DEAL for YOU!"
5. If the activists wanted to get their hands on
the stolen information on the spy’s flashdrive, why would they also, and at the
same time, unleash a horde of zombies upon her?
JD: Maybe they didn't, Paul. That virus had KlownSlats.ru's fingerprints all over it! Or so I hear.
JD: Maybe they didn't, Paul. That virus had KlownSlats.ru's fingerprints all over it! Or so I hear.
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