Can the the premise even be articulated?
Yes, and it has been many times before, with minor variations. “Infected,” people who start off as 28 Days Later style zombies and morph into vampires have taken over. Seagal and his crew run around killing them with swords. Meanwhile, a group of survivors, holed up in a hospital, have run out of food and are trying to escape and get to a survivor’s camp. Back at the camp, the Army has decided to “sanitize” the area by blowing up all of the buildings when the sun comes up and the infected are forced indoors. They know there are people trying to escape the area but decide to blow it up at the crack of dawn for no reason. Will the hunters reach the survivors in time to help them escape? Will they all get out of the building before the military blows it up? Will there be a single moment of originality? Did Seagal make his usual fee, even though he’s not the star of the film?
Evidence That the Script Was Written by Chris Burke:
Army Col: I’m in charge here and, last I heard, I don’t plan to retire any time soon.
C-List Costar:
The Rock’s cousin. Tanoai Reed turns in a pretty decent showing as a behemoth killer of the infected who has these blade things that are held kind of like brass knuckles. He mixes in body slams and airplane spins that will surely do his family proud. And to be fair, he’s not just The Rock’s cousin, he’s also The Rock’s stunt double.
Bargain Bin Quality:
This wasn’t funny, but kind of odd. I’m told that the whole idea behind the I Am Legend funny book is that from the point of view of the infected, the protagonist is the monster. The film skipped this, so Against The Dark pounced on it, and the point that “we are the monsters now” is made several times. That doesn’t stop the gang from blowing their friend away when she becomes infected but remains completely lucid.
Also, Seagal’s character is named Commander Tao.
Redeeming Qualities:
There’s nothing specifically awful about this film. Most of the acting is fine and it does have Seagal, although not enough of him. I guess if you really, really love the genre and have already seen the rip offs of rip offs that this film is ripping you could find something you like here. I felt like I was watching someone else play Resident Evil.
Vestiges of Glory
(Elements of 80’s Action)
Tagline:
He lives by the sword. They will die by it.
Corpse Count:
I’m counting the infected as people here. 56 total bipeds of some kind are sliced, shot, torn apart, dismembered, decapitated or blown up. This is an estimate, as the editing can be dicey and it’s not always clear if the infected are killed or just knocked out or something. Plus, by the half way point I wasn’t really paying that much attention.
Pre-mortem One Liner:
Seagal stumbles into the film’s only creative scene when he rescues one of the survivors from an evil survivor who abducts people and feeds them to his infected daughter. It goes something like this: “Who the fuck are you?” “I’m the mother fucker who’s going to do to you, what you’ve been doing to everybody else.” I especially liked this because it reminds us of how Seagal’s better characters always had a sense of justice.
Postmortem One Liner:
“We’re not here to decide who’s wrong or right. We’re just here to decide who lives and dies.”
What you Learned:
Zombie vampires can also bore you to death.