Zombies: The Beginning

Director - Bruno Mattei (Island of the Living Dead)
Starring - Yvette Yzon (Island of the Living Dead), Alvin Anson (Drug Mule), and Paul Holme (Spyder)
Release Date - 2007
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "When the dead first walked, they had no time for appetizers"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     Sequels are always tough to swallow.  Personally, I love the idea of a sequel and welcome them with open arms but not all sequels are worthy additions to stories we know and love.  Hell, some sequels are only sequels in spirit only like Romero's Dawn and Day of the Dead.  Recently, I was sent review copies of two Bruno Mattei films that was released by Intervision.  The films, Island of the Living Dead an Zombies: The Beginning, were new ones to me but I was curious to check them out.  I popped in Zombies: The Beginning because I figured it would be a fitting place to start.  Sadly, once I popped it in I quickly realized that the film was actually a sequel and Island of the Living Dead needed to be seen first.  

     The film picks up just moments after the ending of Island of the Living Dead and our only survivor Sharon (Yzon) is being rescued by the coast guard.  She is taken to a hospital and begins to suffer from horrible nightmares about the horrors she saw on the island.  Over time she tries to forget about what happened and becomes a monk in a ministry.  A large corporation visits her one day while she is meditating asking that she lead a mission to a compound that went dark sometime before and they believe that a horde of the undead may be the reason and they want to use her knowledge of the undead to get passed them to get valuable information.  She reluctantly agrees to go where they encounter the undead and a mutant experiment that forces them to fight for their lives or die a bloody death.
     Most of Mattei's films borrow heavily from other films and this has become a bit of a trademark of his.  Hell of the Living Dead was an indirect sequel to Dawn of the Dead that borrowed heavily from the story while Island of the Living Dead had way too many thing in common with House of the Dead to call it a coincident.  Hell, even the poster for this flick uses the same one as Lucio Fulci's classic City of the Living Dead.  Zombies: The Beginning was no exception and heavily borrowed from a 2002 zombie film that was an adaption of a video game that was very successful.  The acting in this one is more of the same as what we got in IotLD.  The cast feels like they are just reading their lines with no regard of what emotion they should be showing or conveying from the viewer.  This makes a lot of the scenes boring and extremely bland.  The story for this one is one we had seen before and one that continues to be used to this day with the film's sequels.  In 2002 Resident Evil was released and it was a huge success.  The film followed a group of soldiers who visit a secret underground testing lab after it was sealed shut when a chemical was accidentally released infected everyone there.  Once inside they all discover they are reanimated corpses hellbent on consuming live flesh.  Funny how both these follow the same story.  This film, unlike Mattei's previous film IotLD, lacked the cheesy and sleazy scenes that made it fun to watch.  Finally, this film is fucking bloody and full of kill scenes.  The practical effects are amazing which really makes these kills scenes that much more impressive.  Sadly, you will probably miss these when your mind starts to wonder due to the film's stale story and horrendous acting.  Overall, Zombies: The Beginning is one hell of a bloody film that opts to use gore instead of originality.  The film does deserve at least one watch.