Review for Isle of the Dead

(Originally posted on fight-evil.com)

*This is my first-time viewing of the film*

A military squad is sent to a scientific island base to battle zombies and discover horrifying truths. Now, that's a terrible description of the film, but as Isle of the Dead is an atrocious movie, it only seems fair. Almost all of the military individuals were interchangeable, and it doesn't take a palm reader to tell who the survivor of the film is going to be. Predictability aside, though, this movie has a lot of flaws.

Chief among them are the uber-zombies. These super-zombies can speak, hold grudges, and brawl in fist fights. And some characters even inject themselves with a serum to also become uber-zombies to fight against the other zombies. There's normal zombies too, though. And actually, I'm pretty sure there was even another class of zombies mentioned. Which brings me to another point: this movie, despite having what one might think is a simple plot, got moderately convoluted about half-way through the film.

Why the bazooka launched a nuclear weapon at the end, I didn't catch. Perhaps they explained it, but the audio quality seemed lacking (which, for a movie on SyFy, was odd). The CGI gore was intolerable (though there was one scene, with a bug crawling out of someone's eye, that I got a kick out of). The characters were unremarkable (for the most part), and the plot, at least insofar as it could be followed, was just your run-of-the-mill zombie movie.

And don't get me started on the final thirty minutes of the film; as soon as the uber-zombies started appearing, the movie got much worse. The one highlight of this movie is D.C. Douglas, who played a manic scientist. His sometimes over-the-top acting was deeply amusing, and I rather enjoyed his character (and in fact, he reminded me of Kyle MacLachian's performance as Cal on Marvel's Agent's of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Douglas was a fun character, and I appreciated that, but overall, it couldn't save this movie. An utterly generic and atrocious film, Isle of the Dead is a movie I'd not at all recommend. 4.5/10.