THE REZORT (2015) [Paul's Review]

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!

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?"

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.

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!"

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.