Main cast: Jessica De Gouw (Melanie), Dougray Scott (Archer), Martin McCann (Lewis), Claire Goose (Valerie Wilton), Richard Laing (Kyle Gibbs), Jassa Ahluwalia (Jack), Elen Rhys (Sadie), and Jamie Ward (Mike)
Director: Steve Barker
In the movie itself, the resort in question is stylized as The ReZort. The UK title of this movie is Generation Z. I am not sure what all that “Z” is about, maybe it’s an effort to give this dreary zombie flick some cool, but after watching this movie, I can safely say that the Z can also refer to its ZZZZZZ factor.
The world had been struck by – and survived – a zombie outbreak. Now, the world is mostly zombie-free… except at the ReZort, owned by the shrewd businesswoman Valerie Wilton who provides guests with the opportunity to hunt and shoot zombies. These zombies are all leashed or kept in secure compounds, of course, allowing even the most inept shooter to feel like a big game hunter. Our heroine Melanie is still traumatized by memories of zombies snacking on her family, so she feels that a trip to the ReZort may be a way for her to get over her trauma. Joining her is her boyfriend Lewis, a quiet former soldier-sort called Archer, two gamers who won a trip here, and a lady who is actually part of a “zombie rights” group.
This lady, Sadie, sneaks off on the first night to download incriminating files from the company server, but she inadvertently lets loose a virus into the system. As a result, the security system soon breaks down, letting the zombies loose to take down all those idiots who thought it’d be a good idea to go to such a place for a vacation.
In many ways, The Rezort is a standard zombie flick, incorporating many present-day zombie tropes like those things being able to dash like Usain Bolt hunting down the last Big Mac in the Rio Olympics Village, only to be conveniently slower than the good guys when the plot demands it, or even better, just stand there and those the movie has designated as the ones who will survive to the bitter end to just run past them. These zombies are also amazingly stealthy for long-dead packs that travel in big numbers, as they can just show up around the corner or even a few feet down the street without anyone noticing them earlier. There are only two characters that are even a little bit developed, so it is easy to tell from early on which people will survive all the way to the end.
Oh, and we also need the obligatory social commentary, of course. Men are beasts, et cetera – nothing here that hasn’t been said many times before in zombie movies. The “twist” of where the zombies come from has me rolling up my eyes because, duh, nobody has ever stopped to imagine that the ReZort will surely need a source of zombies to replace the ones gunned down by guests, apparently. Maybe the zombie plague also rots the people’s brains.
But the nail in the coffin to this dreary movie is the female lead. Jessica De Gouw may be a talented actress for all I know, but her role only requires her to pout like a brat who smells something funny. Her character, Melanie, is bloody annoying in a “Die, hag, die!” manner. Let me put it this way: she does nothing other than to disapprove of the weirdest things. When her boyfriend shoots an infected person, for example, she completely stops talking to him because, in her words, what he did was “just not right”. She also looks down on Archer from her moral high ground for killing things so effectively, when these two men are the ones hauling her rear end to safety all the way and time. Not to mention, getting all angry and self righteous because someone is killing people who are about to turn into zombies – is this woman fucking insane?
So, this movie is nothing special aside from the fact that it is a British-made formulaic thing, and the wrong character is made the “good girl”. ZZZZZ is right.
