Shadow Walkers

AUGUST 24, 2007

GENRE: CRAP, MAD SCIENTIST, ZOMBIE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

I knew right from the start that Shadow Walkers was going to be bad. For starters, the credits were presented in back-and-forth-vision, where you see one credit, then some quick movie footage, then another credit, then more footage... and so on. This is possibly the most annoying thing any editor/director/janitor can ever do in a film. I can count on one finger the number of movies where it was done in any effective manner (unless the intended effect is pissing me off royally, in which case it's a blinding success). Also the font is like, Atari graphics style, and each credit zooms at the screen. Oh and they are all out of order too. The music credit comes right before the director's, and there is NO casting person listed.

But once the movie starts you'll see why - none of these people could have possibly been 'cast'. They're all awful, and all no names, which leads me to believe they are all merely friends of someone on the production team. And shitty friends at that, if I was in a bind I would never stoop to asking one of my friends to appear in Shadow Walkers.

The script is a harmless enough Resident Evil ripoff, complete with dialogue that sounds like it was mistranslated ("Is that... people?") and a Wesker style human villain played by a guy who really REALLY wants to be Josh Brolin. In fact, nearly all the actors share a resemblance to the type of actor the director probably wished he could get: in addition to Brolin-lite, there's a fake Josh Lucas, a fake J.K. Simmons, a fake what's her name from season 2 of 24...

But as bad as the credits (and everything else that followed) were, the movie actually elicited a "OH FUCK YOU MOVIE!" from me when the hero shoots a zombie monster, which does nothing, and he says "We're gonna need a bigger gun." If you have the balls to reference Jaws, you better damn well earn it, otherwise you're just reminding us of something we'd rather be watching. Assholes.

There's a scene a bit earlier that almost made me wonder if the film was actually some sort of subtle parody of such types of movies. Along with the worst green-screen I have ever seen (and I have seen A Sound Of Thunder), there's a record THREE railing kills in about as many minutes. And one guy's scream makes even the most liberal usage of the Wilhelm seem nuanced in comparison.

Hilariously, I looked on Youtube to see if anyone had uploaded the trailer so I could show a friend, and BOTH of these scenes were presented in their entirety. Go check em out, and multiply it by 15, and you'll understand the severe torture and boredom I experienced while watching this wretched piece of shit.

There's also an unhealthy amount of technical errors, such as when they are cutting back and forth during a conversation between three people and one of them was clearly absent when they shot the reverse angle. The makeup on the zombies is as lazy as it gets, and there's no real gore to speak of. Even the DVD is a complete wash, literally, as the color black never appears in the transfer; everything dark just looks a faded gray. Terrible.

By the end of the film it seemed like they were simply making it up as they went along. There's an Eddie Deezen type guy who suddenly begins knocking things over, stammering for no reason, running into people and sending all of their papers flying... it's as idiotic as it sounds. There's also something called a "Night Vision Room" ('the judo range?') with a bunch of ninjas, not entirely unlike that scene in Wayne's World where he opens the back door of the donut shop.

Will it surprise any of you to learn that this movie was distributed by Lion's Gate? Just like all 4 or 5 other movies I declare the worst I have seen thus far for Horror Movie A Day were! Go LG!

What say you?