A special military/scientific team is sent to stop a zombie infection at a college campus (mindless zombies, get it? I didn’t pick up on it at first), whilst tracking down the numero uno zombie to gain a blood sample for an antidote. This they have to do within a certain time frame or else the military will be sending in the missiles to blow the place up. Ed Quinn and scientist Emmanuelle Vaugier are joined by hardened soldiers led by Sarge (Sticky Digits…er…Fingaz), and including buff (yet undeniably sexy) Victoria Pratt, misogynistic a-hole James Jean Parks, and sensitive rookie Nadine Velazquez. Sid Haig and Ellie Cornell turn up in mere cameos as an unscrupulous college professor and a desk-bound military woman, respectively.
A sequel to a film often cited as one of the worst films of all-time, this Michael Hurst sci-fi/horror/action hybrid is surprisingly watchable. Sure, it’s a low-rent “Aliens” with zombies (with Sticky Fingaz in the Al Matthews role, unimpressively. Were Bokeem Woodbine and Ken Foree busy?), but…what? You don’t like the sound of that? Then this film’s charms (few as they are) will be completely lost on you. I had an OK, cheesy time with it. I mean, at least the whole thing was competently done (despite a few dodgy performances and a certain character making more dumb-dumb decisions in a single scene than I’ve seen committed by countless ‘final girls’ in slasher movies), unlike the previous film (How’s that for faint praise?), and it had a fine sense of humour (A title card early on reads: 29 Days Later and there’s an hilarious scene in a library with a shushing zombie librarian).
More scenes developing the characters played by the stunning Pratt (I’ll take her over Jenette Goldstein any day) and Velazquez (who in my view, have seriously romantic/sexual feelings for one another. I can’t see it just being my imagination…well, not entirely), and also genre faves Cornell (“Halloween 4 & 5”) and Haig (“The Big Doll House”, “House of 1,000 Corpses”), would have helped immensely (In fact, the two leads are so useless and bland, I’d have had Pratt and Velazquez as the leads). So would a decent script and a good director, but hey, that’s probably asking too much.
OVERALL SUMMARY
For what it is, it’s better than the previous film by a country mile, and about on par with “Resident Evil”. Take that as you will.
