Zach Lipovsky (director)
Platform Entertainment (studio)
18 (certificate)
118 minutes (length)
27 July 2015 (released)
24 July 2015
Chase is a journalist who needs a story and needs a big one. He has been stranded in the town’s zombie safety zone for too long, simply filming people getting treated. No one cares about this story anymore and he is about to become old news. This is until the safety zone becomes the epicentre of an outbreak. Zombies rampage through the streets killing all before them. Now Chase has the story, will he survive to tell it or become another undead beast?
Based on the very popular and fantastic game franchise, Dead Rising Watchtower feels less like a game and more like a badly pieced together but occasionally creative, television movie. Now to begin with we have to speak about the script and the cast. The script is a serviceable thing that has the usual 3 acts, blood spurts and adapted weapons the gamers and young teens will love. I can imagine a very happy table of script glue together/ writer/ university educated in game story telling types all smiling over how they got it just right to fit the mould. We also have the hero, who is a dirt bag and ends up a minor saint. Many will like this if they loved Frank from the games. He was wise cracking and kicked ass. The cast are all high kicking and good looking; Jesse in particular looks very hot but does lack a level of calm menace that the games lead always possessed. His addition to the piece does give it an air of television melodrama and it is even filmed in this way, maybe to compliment him?
I have to say that I loathe the use of televisual cinematography and shot composition in mainstream films. I do feel this is where so much of the battle for creative film maker's who are trying to break away from this, is lost. I get why filmmakers choose to film with DV and edit with smooth cuts and frame in that way. Costs for the main, saleability to the home and device market are another and audience expectations is the third. So in all we at home are the main factors which direct this. Lipovsky has attempted to change this a little with the use of techniques that are newer, like the weapon cam, which I liked and the tracking shot of Jesse fighting to get away from the bus.... nice. Overall the film is best summed up by a zombie reference. If this film were a stranded surviour, it would fall over with a crowd coming toward it and then crawl away but by the time it had got two feet it would have been eaten alive and become another shuffling entry to the over populated zombie list....