Zoombies Review

Zoombies

Directed by Glenn Miller

Released in 2016

Eden Wildlife Zoo is preparing for their grand opening when a virus starts to spread through the animals in the zoo. The strange virus started with a group of three monkeys in the operating room of the veterinarian's office. The monkeys attacked the vets and then soon escaped the room and infected the rest of the zoo. This caused many animals and zoo workers to die. This movie was essentially Jurassic Park but a zoo instead of a dinosaur theme park. Zoombies was filled with subpar actors playing cliche characters, a simple script with no real plotline, and terrible special effects. I give Zoombies 3 brains out of 5, and I think that might be me being generous. The biggest problem I had with Zoombies was that in the ever present threat of zombie animals and the virus spreading until it couldn’t be contained, the zombie virus was never explained. It was a virus that could warp the animals brains, making them vicious and blood-thirsty beyond what the animals would normally be. I know that Eden Wildlife Zoo was under attack by the zombie animals, but if the surviving employees couldn’t figure it out, why not a few scenes during the credits with the CDC doing research on it?  There was enough animal blood for collecting samples and presumably the CDC eventually showed up. You would think that a zombie virus movie would have a stronger emphasis on the virus. Other things that were bothersome was that the special effects for the animal attacks were blurry and honestly just bad. Almost all of the interesting characters die in the first twenty minutes. Also there were completely unnecessary subplots throughout the movie. Granted, all this being said Zoombies was a fun movie. If you’re looking for a movie with quality and one that makes sense then steer clear of Zoombies. But if you want a cheesy horror movie that’ll just make you laugh then this one is for you.

Zoombies was a lot like the earlier works we watched like White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie in terms of acting and plotline. I was personally very surprised to find out that the movie was released earlier this year. Due to the poor cinematography one would think that it was released 15 years ago. What related Zoombies to Day of the Dead was that both films had a virus that created zombies instead of zombies created through voodoo. In both films we start to see the progression of how zombies start to become more aggressive and more monsterlike, instead of just mindless creatures. In the short story “Little Violette” the characters had conflicted feelings about killing the zombie because they had personal connections to her. Zoombies was much like that since the director of the zoo didn’t want to kill the animals and was trying to save their collection of rare birds. Eventually, in both stories the main characters have to get over their restrain and kill the animals for the safety of others.

Below is the link to the film’s IMDB entry and the movie can be viewed on Netflix as well as Amazon Prime.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5340882/