Resident Evil: Extinction.

Will all the characers be back, or will they have randomly and inexplicably disappeared?  What will happen with puppet Alice?  How often will Milla Jovovich end up confused and naked, and often times, soaking wet?  Starkwell and Lovelock sit patiently, prepared to do the research necessary to answer these questions and many more, and likely make all sorts of jokes in between.  Let’s see what happens as they see what happens as the DVD explodes into the DVD player and onto the screen.  Like Apocalypse, this was written but not directed by Anderson.  This time, Russell Mulcahy takes the reigns.  He is known, by me, as the dude that directed “Highlander”.  Ready, set, EXTINCTION.

[...]

Lovelock: There can be only one!

Starkwell: …

Lovelock: Last time, I promise.

[...]

[Opens with same sequence from the first film of… Milla Jovovich, naked and confused.]

Lovelock: I prefer all new naked and confused footage, but I suppose this counts.

[...]

[Scientists dump dead Alice into a pile of dead Alices.]

Lovelock: What the-

[...]

Then the film explained how the virus was not wiped out when they bombed Racoon City.  The whole world is over run with zombies.  This is all it took for Lovelock to simultaneously cry tears of joy, high five Starkwell and do a roundhouse jump kick while playing air guitar.  He was so into his playing that he missed a scene of Alice killing some drifters that ambushed her.

[...]

[Pimp and Carlos are back.  Jill is nowhere to be found.  None of them are traveling with Alice…]

Lovelock: Awwww… but whose gun handling will we be able to make fun of?

Starkwell: Don’t worry.  Ali Larter will probably fill in nicely.

Lovelock: I’m just happy that George Harrison Guy is back.

Starkwell: No.  No more, dude.  That actor is ISRAELI… you’re an idiot.

[...]

[Then there was a secret meeting with Umbrella corporation people where the head of the table was a dude in shades.  And he is a hologram.]

Starkwell: Why would a holographic image need sunglasses?  In an underground facility no less...

Lovelock: Maybe it’s sunny where he’s sitting?

Starkwell: Maybe he’s sitting in the Matrix.

[...]

Then there was a scene that pretty much rips off Romero’s “Day of the Dead”.  Maybe he was aiming for HOMAGE.  Anyways, overall, the film is pretty entertaining.  Starkwell and Lovelock watched pretty closely.  It still has its cheesy moments, but is definitely not TRYING as hard as "Apocalypse" did to be overtly cheesy and campy.  I’m paraphrasing from Starkwell. 

[...]

[Naked Alice clone sits in a tub of water, actual Alice has nightmares.]

Lovelock: Did you see the way the director SEAMLESSLY showed us that she has telekinetic powers AND showed us a naked, confused and soaking wet Alice?

Starkwell: They’re getting better and better at working Naked Milla into different parts of the movie.

[...]

Then there was a zombie bird scene, and due to his irrational fear of birds, for the first time in my life, I saw Lovelock closing his eyes during a movie.  Starkwell missed a lot of what was going on, since he was busy ridiculing Lovelock.  A few people got pecked to death, but eventually Alice saved the day with her powers of explosion.

[...]

Starkwell: Nice of her to show up and re-join the convoy AFTER that random girl got pecked to death.

Lovelock: Wait... That blonde girl’s name is K-Mart?  Worst post-apocalyptic name ever.   She may as well be named TARGET or GONER… You know who lasts long?  People named SOLITAIRE or DESTRO or TRIXIE or DYNAMITE or NITRO.

Starkwell: I name you VILLAGE IDIOT.

[...]

[Claire and her convoy of survivors are HEADING TO VEGAS.  To find gas.]

Lovelock: Vegas will be crawling with zombies.  Shit, even before the apocalypse, half of the performers there were essentially the living dead.

Starkwell: I'm just glad no one said the over-used and totally played-out "Vegas, baby, Vegas."

[...]

So basically, while in Vegas, the convoy comes across a crate full of fast moving mutant zombies that the Umbrella Scientists left for them.  They bear some resemblance to the crazy zombies in Lenzi’s “Nightmare City”.  Could it be Anderson is paying HOMAGE?  I'm starting to think that maybe Anderson watches the same movies that we do.  

[...]

Lovelock: I kind of wish that the fats mutant zombies all had machetes.

[...]

Most of the convoy dies, including COWBOY, PIMP.  K-Mart lives… proving Lovelock wrong.  At least for now.  Anyways, Alice goes all NINJA and takes out the Umbrella scientists, and there were fistpumps performed all over the Zombie Hall TV room.  Anyways, they need to GET TO THE CHOPPER again, so, in order to infiltrate the secret Umbrella lab and get the chopper, Carlos goes KAMIKAZE and explodes himself in a big truck.  Lovelock cried while humming a George Harrison tune.  Starkwell smacked him in the back of the head.

[...]

[The convoy gang gets on the chopper, heads to Alaska.  Alice stays behind to head into the secret lab and finish up with Scientist dude.  Who is now a mutant super being thing.]

Lovelock:  Oh man, Milla Jovovich holding a DYING NAKED CONFUSED AND SOAKING WET Milla Jovovich!!!!!!!

Starkwell: Every movie they find a way to up the Naked Milla ante.

Lovelock: I can’t wait to see what they do next time around.

[...]

So, Alice takes care of Mutant Dude, and now, she wants to go after Captain Sunglasses in Tokyo.  She is of course going to bring with her, an army of one million Alice clones.  ROLL CREDITS.

[...]

Lovelock: Hopefully the first hour of the next movie is just a bunch of Naked Confused Milla Clones waking up a bunch of equally Naked Confused Milla Clones.

Starkwell: I’d watch that.

Lovelock: Dare to dream.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Well, if history has taught us anything, this movie should start with a naked and confused Milla Jovovich.  I guess Paul Anderson likes showing his future wife off.  I should mention though, that while Anderson did write this one, a new director was brought on.  Maybe this will help... I guess we won't know until we get our 'Apocalypse' on.

[...]

[Intro is a recap of the entire first movie.]

Lovelock: Dude, we SOoooo could have skipped the first movie.

Starkwell: Maybe I should just skip this one.  Also... sorry dude, but it looks like we won’t get Naked Confused Milla to start this sucker off… Well, that is, unless you count the small shot of her in the recap.

Lovelock: No.  Failure.

[...]

[Jill Valentine is a SEXY COP, who’s OUT TO KICK some ASS.]

Lovelock: Seriously, Jill Valentine is a SEXY COP, who’s OUT TO KICK some ASS.

Starkwell: Looks like we done gots a SEXY COP, and she’s OUT TO KICK some ASS.

[...]

[Alice wakes up in some lab… naked.]

Lovelock: Success!

[...]

There was some pretty solid zombie mayhem.  Racoon City was over run, Starkwell and Lovelock were PUMPED.  Then a dude who looks kind of like George Harrison (according to Lovelock)  jumps out of a chopper shooting zombies in the air, and they laughed HARD.  Lovelock played a kick ass air guitar solo.

[...]

Lovelock: Here comes the sun.  Bitch.

Starkwell: Dude you’re nuts, he doesn’t look like George Harrison.

Lovelock: Not Beatles era, more like Traveling Wiburys timeframe.

[...]

They mostly just watched quietly as the story unfolded.  We have one group of survivors including JILL SEXYCOP, her cop friend, a reporter and some dude ('some dude' dies almost immediately).  They’re hauled up in a church, and we get our first view, in this movie, of the super mutant things.  This one is much faster than they were in the first film.  Anyways, I couldn’t always make out what they were saying because they spent a lot of time making fun of the actress playing Jill, and the way she held her gun.

[...]

Lovelock: “Bang bang.  I’m Jill and I’m here to party.”

Starkwell: “I’ve got you in my sites big boy.  You have the right to remain SEXY.”

[And so on and so forth.]

[...] 

[Alice flies through the window on a motorcycle.]

Starkwell: Good thing we knew she had a motorcycle.

Lovelock: Good thing she knew exactly where they were.

Starkwell: Good thing she wore her helmet.

Lovelock: Safety first!  As you crash through a window!

Starkwell: Good thing she picked an ALMOST skimpier and non-functional outfit than Jill is wearing.

Lovelock: Must be a competition.

[...]

[Topless zombies.]

Lovelock: Do you think this movie is to blame for all of those zombie stripper movies?

Starkwell: Even if it isn’t, that shit don’t belong.  Useless boobies.  Uwe Boll style.

[...]

Anyways, the heroes venture forward and have managed to keep the interest of Starkwell and Lovelock.  There are quite a few characters in this one, and, unlike the first in the series, they’ve actually kept most of them around past the first half hour of the film.  We assume that the different groups of survivors will all meet up at one point.  Then there was a graveyard scene, where bodies started exploding out of their graves and both Alice and Jill got their SEXYKILL LEGKICK powers on.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, Starkwell and Lovelock were still making fun of it, HARDCORE, but were having an absolute blast and eating mountains of popcorn.

[...]

[Evil Suits from Unbrella activate NEMESIS.]

Starkwell: Of course there’s a group of weekend warrior rednecks.

Lovelock: Of course the black guy is a pimp.  And has custom made guns.  And holds them sideways when aiming.

[NEMESIS kills all the rednecks, leaves Pimp alone.]

Starkwell: Is it just me or is the NEMESIS view kind of exactly like "Robocop" view?

Lovelock: Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.

[...]

Alice splits up from the group to have a one on one battle with NEMESIS.  “A boss battle, if you will”, says Lovelock.  Then Starkwell kicked him in his nuts.  The rest of the group, on a quest to find some British guy’s daughter, meets up with Pimp, obviously, and then with the other group, the chopper-jumping SWAT team, led by the guy that Lovelock says looks like George Harrison. 

[...]

[Reporter is eaten by a classroom full of zombie children.]

Lovelock: I give them all an ‘A+’.

Starkwell: Breaking news!  You’re dead!  And the crowd goes wild.

[...]

[On Jill's gun play.]

Lovelock: Seriously, she holds her fucking gun like a five year old child holds a water pistol.

Starkwell: That’s insulting, dude.  To five year olds.

[...]

Anderson seems to have no issue with introducing characters and then immediately offing them.  Starkwell and Lovelock both feel that this is an asset.  What isn’t an asset, according to Starkwell is that “Jill’s acting is atrocious” and “most of the animated characters in the video game series are less robotic than her.”  Then they made fun of how a kitchen scene with zombie dogs was a bit of a rip-off of the "Jurassic Park" kitchen scene.

[...]

[They have just under an hour to get to a chopper that is leaving Racoon City.]

Starkwell: So… basically… get to the chopper?

Lovelock: You’re doing it wrong… GET TO THA’ CHOPPAH!

[...]

Lovelock: Is it just me, or is Alice giving George Harrison Guy her Bedroom Eyes?  I mean “don’t worry… I’m not contagious…” What is that all about?

Starkwell: Seriously, dude.  Stop calling him George Harrison Guy.  It makes NO SENSE.

[...]

Then Alice has to fight NEMESIS again.  In front of a crowd.

[...]

[NEMESIS is actually BORING DUDE from the first movie.]

Starkwell: Might be the most obvious twist of all time.

[NEMESIS turns into a good guy!]

Starkwell: Might be the second most obvious twist of all time.

[...]

[Racoon City gets all ‘sploded.  Chopper crashes.]

Lovelock: Alice is dead?

Starkwell: Well, she’s on the cover of the next film, so I assume not.

[The Media disguises the incident as a reactor meltdown in the city.  That Unbrella tried to save Racoon City.]

Lovelock: It’s a bit far fetched that people would believe that.

Starkwell: Have you watched "FOX News" lately?

Lovelock: Good point.

[...]

[Alice is alive.  In a lab, in a tank of water (like Luke Skywalker), CONFUSED AND NAKED.]

Starkwell: And everything is right in the world.

Lovelock: How many times can one person wake up confused and naked?

Starkwell: Jovovich is DEFINITELY going for the record.

[During this naked confused part, she flashes back to OTHER naked confused parts of previous films.]

Lovelock: Exponential nakey-confused?  My brain just exploded.

[...]

Anyways, they set up the next film, and I guess Alice will have super powers, also, be a robot, also be a bad guy?  Maybe?  All in all, Starkwell and Lovelock had a lot of fun with this one, and are actually excited for the next one.  Anderson embraced the cheese here, and it certainly worked in his favor.

Resident Evil.

Love it or hate it, Paul Anderson’s “Resident Evil” series likely had a fair amount to do with the resurgence of zombie movies in blockbuster format at the beginning of the 21st century, and its subsequent boom of shitty b-grade trashy zombie camp.  Although none of the "Resident Evil" have really been critical successes, none have truly been flops at the box office, and the series has managed to stay afloat for not one, but five films over ten years.  Starkwell, Lovelock, meet Alice.

[...]

[One giant Pharmaceutical Company rules the world, pretty much.]

Starkwell: I thought this was a fictional movie.

Lovelock: Heyo!

[...]

[Scientists and employees of the Umbrella Corporation are trapped in research lab, someone released the ZOMBIE gas, or the T-Virus.]

Starkwell: Am I crazy or does the Umbrella corporation only seem to hire really good looking men and women between the ages of twenty-five and thirty?

[Milla Jovovich, wakes up naked, obviously.]

Lovelock: Would you rather this all look like a real corporation?  Have you seen what people in cubicles look like? They don't look like Milla Jovovich naked, I can tell you that much.

Starkwell: Yeah... well-

Lovelock: Shut up.  You’re ruining the side boob action.

[...]

Then the action packed music kicked in, as well as the pack of action.  Alice and some dude are taken by the Umbrella squad, and they all venture down a tunnel on a train, I assume to get to the super secret lab.  Alice doesn’t remember anything, but has flashes of a wedding to some dude who was hiding in the train’s closet.  It all seems fairly straight forward, and, thankfully according to Lovelock “not a whole hell of a lot like the original video game.”  To be fair, he doesn’t remember much, except that someone therein was a ‘Master of Unlocking’.  Anyways, they were quiet for a while.  It was all fairly by-the-numbers sci-fi horror, but as Starkwell points out “maybe it only seems 'by-the-numbers' because a lot of other movies borrowed from the same gene pool.”

[...]

[We see first zombie.]

Lovelock: I like where this is going.

[We see first glimpse of mutant zombie hybrid thingy things.]

Lovelock: Go onnnnn….

[...]

[Lasers head towards some of the hero squad in a hallway, they have to try and manoeuvre around them.  Each wave of lasers is harder than the preceding wave of lasers.]

Lovelock: That’s a little TOO video game-ish… Why would anyone design something like that?  Why wouldn’t they just send the “IMPOSSIBLE TO DODGE” laser combination right off the bat?

Starkwell: Seriously.  And from a FILM MAKING point of view, since they all died anyways, why not just have the first wave kill them all?

Lovelock: Well clearly Paul Anderson wanted to show people doing flips and shit.

[...]

What Starkwell and Lovelock DO enjoy is the fast pace, and the fact that the movie doesn’t take long to get going.  They, on the other hand, hate every single thing that Michelle Rodriguez says.  For example, lame things such as something “BITCH AIN’T STANDING NOW.”  Groan times a million.

[...]

[Crazy zombie madness.]

Lovelock: The zombies don’t look half bad, also, yay for people getting eaten.

[Alice apparently knows how to fight.]

Lovelock: Definitely where “The Bourne Identity” got all of its ideas.

Starkwell: Riiiiight… especially jump kicking the zombie dog?  Right?

Lovelock: Matt Damon couldn’t pull off that red dress thing that she's wearing, though.

Starkwell: Well, ANYWAYS, it’s nice to see a movie get zombie dogs right.

[...]

[The team try and fight and shut down the computer, the 'Red Queen', voiced by a young British girl.]

Lovelock:  Were they trying to make the Red Queen this annoying?

[...]

Non-stop zombie mayhem.

[...]

[Alice breaks a zombie’s neck.]

Starkwell: I don’t know that I would use my thighs to break the neck of a rabidly contagious zombie…

Lovelock: SHHhhh… she’s doing sexy kills.

[...]

More zombie mayhem, complete with GUY SACRIFICE staying back to hold the fort after being bitten and stranded, TOUGH CHICK LATINAPANTS who’s been half eaten but still not turning and fighting off the infection, ALICE VON SEXYKILL getting enough memory back to remember that there is a cure, and of course, finally EVIL McPLOT-TWIST shows his true colors.   Starkwell and Lovelock came up with the names.  There’s another character that they just call DUDE BORING.  He’s a scientist I think.

[...]

[Mutant thing kills McPLOT-TWIST, starts hunting the group but then…]

Lovelock: GUY SACRIFICE!  He’s ALIVE!!!!!

[For about another two minutes.]

[...]

Well, at least DUDE BORING survives.

[...]

[Alice wakes up in a facility.  Whole city is fucked.  They set it up for the sequel.]

Starkwell: Of course she’s naked.

Lovelock: Every movie should end with Naked and Confused Milla Jovovich.

Starkwell: Even kids’ movies?

Lovelock: ESPECIALLY kids’ movies.

[...]

A fair start to a series of films that would/could go on seemingly forever.

Beneath the Surface.

For so long, budget films would go the horror root.  This is generally because sometimes the cheapness actually enhances the overall experience.  Within that lower budget realm, there is also an alarmingly large number of zombie films, especially in recent years.  Occasionally there’s an indie film that tries to do something a little different, give the zombie idea a little spin.  This can sometimes work really well, or, more often, fall on its ass.  Let’s see where Blake Reigle’s “Beneath the Surface” ends up. 

[...]

[The two main characters are apparently planning to dig up a course.]

Lovelock: It’s nice to see a movie about high school kids where the actors actually look the right age.

Starkwell: I guess… but, when it sounds like it was written by high school kids, and looks like it was shot on a camera they got for Christmas 2004… it's all a little less nice.

[...]

They’re poking fun at it, but regardless of the no-budgetness of it, it already is slightly more compelling than most of what comes out of a studios like “Full Moon” or “The Asylum”.  But OUTSIDE of the two main characters… all of the actors are pure garbage.  Starkwell feels that they make the dialogue sound worse than it actually is.  But no, seriously, the acting is horrifying.  It sounds like they are reading the lines for the first time without having any sense of the character or the story.  AT ALL. Those are Starkwell’s words.  I’m paraphrasing.

[...]

[“Dude falling in love with girl” montage, between main character, Ethan, and his lady friend, Kayla.]

Starkwell: SOOooooo… unnecessarily long…

Lovelock: What was with that fucking shot of that fucking guy with a pacifier in his mouth dancing for a million fucking years?

[The troops are getting restless.]

[...]

The “jock” character vowed to cover Kayla in his SEX SAUCE tonight.  And then, Starkwell bailed.  Very quickly.  Lovelock is sticking around because he’s pretty sure that most of these chumps are going to die.  Unfortunately the first death was Kayla, who overdosed, and it happened at the tale end of a very uncomfortable date rape sequence.

[...]

Lovelock: It’s fairly obvious that all of the “adults” in this movie are actually related to the people in this movie. Either that or they’re robots.  It’s the only way to explain how horrible they ALL ARE.

[...]

[We are thirty minutes in, and nothing has happened, outside of the whole Kayla death.]

Lovelock: TAKE FOREVER!

[...]

They finally cut back to the two main dudes robbing Kayla from her grave and doing some kind of voodoo shit on her to try and wake her up from the dead.  The next morning, she actually wakes up, and Ethan’s reaction is, how did Lovelock put it? ...“The worst acting, maybe ever.”  After saying that he went to go take a dump and said “DON’T PAUSE IT.”  I didn’t… I actually fast forwarded a lot, to avoid staring at this confusing mess for too much longer.

[...]

[Twenty minutes of  Ethan and his buddy trying to make zombie Kayla act normal.]

Lovelock: This movie has no business being longer than ten minutes.

Lovelock: [Imitating Starkwell] This movie has no business being longer than NO minutes.

Lovelock: [As himself again] Nice.

[...]

[Music video of some band.]

Lovelock: Right… because the movie already TOTALLY had no filler AT ALL.

[Lovelock then dry heaved.]

[...]

[Kayla is suddenly under a spell, where she becomes, basically a ninja, and is off to kill the person who wronged her.]

Lovelock: So… basically, it’s “The Crow” without the action, the good directing, dialogue, the good actors, the good soundtrack, the budget, the ET CETERA FOREVER!

[...]

Anyways, she finds the dude that killed her, and shoves an exacto knife down his throat and slashed him up with a machete.  It was actually fairly gruesome and effective.  Lovelock just said “TOO LITTLE TOO LATE” got up and left.  I tried to tell him that there were ten minutes left but he was long gone.  He missed, in the last ten minutes, about five million different twists that happened at the end.  None of them made sense.  Having nothing happen for so long, and then bombarding the viewer with a whole shitload of shit, seems shitty. Oh by the way, to answer the question I asked at the beginning... THE TOILET.  That's where "Beneath the Surface" ends up.  FLUSH.

Undead Or Alive.

Obviously the director saw "Corky Romano" and thought Chris Kattan would be great in a western.  A western zombie movie.  Yeah, that Chris Kattan.  I almost wanted to make Starkwell and Lovelock watch "Corky Romano" to make them angry going into this sucker, but that wouldn’t be fair to the movie.  Besides, it probably won’t end up needing much help from me to conjure up hate from these two.  I start the movie, and it was already off to a pretty rough start.  We get a few sentences about Geronimo and how he created the White Man’s Curse.  There was a joke mixed in there that fell really flat.  So… yeah… off to a rough start.

[...]

[Zombie Farmer, played by Brian Posehn, eats a chicken’s head off.  Daughter throws a pie in his face.  He eats his wife’s brains.]

Starkwell: Really?  Pie in the face?  Really?  Brian Posehn?  Really?

Lovelock: The head eating stuff was pretty cool.

Starkwell: Says you.  The soundtrack clearly features some of the shittiest country music ever recorded..

[...]

As the movie trickled forward, it’s clear that it has that “this was written by a fifteen year old” kind of a feel.  At least that’s what Starkwell said.  The jokes involve things like, for example, a priest yelling “SHOW US YOUR TITS” at the bar dancer hooker girl.  The “name” actors, if James Denton and Chris Kattan are, in fact,  “name” actors, seem like they phoned their performances in.  On drugs.  Somehow, everyone else seems to be trying so hard to act, TOO HARD, that it’s honestly painful to watch.  It’s also clearly not going to be bad enough to become unintentionally funny.  Lovelock said “It’s just treading water in a sea of mediocrity”.  This movie is making him start to sound like Starkwell.

[...]

[Zombie Farmer laughs at the sheriff and farts.]

Lovelock: If there’s one thing I hate, it’s laughing and farting zombies.

Starkwell: There is so much more to hate here then just one thing.  I mean, if this is supposed to be a comedy… I feel like someone forgot to tell half of the actors.  But then the other half are in on it, but OOPS they suck at acting.

Lovelock: I think someone forgot to tell the writer it was a comedy.

Starkwell: I think someone forgot to tell the writer to STOP.

[...]

[Chris Kattan names his guns “Sparkles” and “Sunshine”.]

Lovelock: Actually, that’s a solid joke.

[Then the main characters have a drawn out shooting contest.  I think it was supposed to be funny.]

Starkwell: And, that is not.

[...]

There are some jokes in the mix that work, and work quite well.  They actually get a solid laugh from the guys.  The problem is many (most) others don’t.  When enough jokes FAIL, eventually even the ones that may have otherwise worked, NO LONGER WORK.  

[...]

Starkwell: Of course there’s a sexy native girl.

[...]

Starkwell seems visibly annoyed at the fact that the evil sheriff and his deputy gang are basically still themselves even when they become zombies, except that they seem to want to eat people.  The zombie farmer from the beginning, on the other hand, is a straight up brainless zombie, eating everyone in sight, including his wife and daughter.  Inconsistencies like this never sit well with Starkwell.

[...]

[Priest is hauled up in the bar, eventually gets eaten.]

Starkwell: Obviously the topless prostitute eats him.  But... More importantly, why did they focus on the priest for like fifteen minutes if he was just going to die?

Lovelock: Is the answer good writing?

Starkwell: Try again.

Lovelock: To make a movie that could have been ten minutes long fill ninety minutes?

Starkwell: Definitely warmer.

[...]

Eventually all hell breaks loose, and there’s a decent amount of zombie carnage. The “heroes’” situation is worsened by the fact that head shots don’t seem to work.  Seems that if their arms are cut off, the arms stay alive and wiggly, but now Sexy Native Girl says try and cut the head off, and THAT should do it.  She sounds like she’s making it up as she goes along, which is fitting since, as Starkwell said, “it sounds like the writer was making it up as he was going along too.”

[...]

Starkwell: Of course Pocahontas is a great sword fighter.

Lovelock: Dude, more like OF COURSE that random zombie  is a great sword fighter .

Starkwell: Good point.

[...]

The ending makes as little sense as the rest of the movie did.  Plus they make it look like they're setting it up for a sequel.  PLEASE GOD NO.  The last five minutes of the movies is basically the blooper reel.  Which, again, was clearly added in to make the movie actually reach the ninety minute mark.  Everyone loves bloopers right? “Not these bloopers”, says Lovelock.  At least there was more lame country music about ZOMBIES.  Ugh. The film calls itself a ZOMBEDY.   The problem is, it’s not a good zombie movie, nor is it a solid comedy.  As a western, it is straight up PISS POOR.

Isolation.

"Isolation" is an Irish film from 2005 that deals with the idea of genetic experiments on cows going TERRIBLY wrong.  This is not a new idea in the sub genre.  In fact, the environmental angle goes pretty far back.  Let’s see if writer / director Billy O’Brien is able to bring something special to the mix.

[...]

[Blondie shoves her arm up a pregnant cow’s vagina, something bites it.]

Lovelock: Well now, that’s a fucked up way to begin a movie.

[...]

The atmosphere in the movie is already quite grim, as we are introduced to a handful of characters, including a couple of drifters and some kind of evil scientist.  An Irish farm is certainly a spectacular location for filming.  The acting, thus far seems quite good, but as Lovelock has theorized in the past… sometimes accents make the acting seem better than it is.  Starkwell thinks that, in this case, it really is spot on and not just assisted by the lovely accents.

[...]

[Farmer Dan needs help delivering the calf, Drifter Jamie helps.]

Lovelock: This is the grossest thing ever.

Starkwell: Let the record show that you have watched “Erotic Nights of the Living Dead” in its entirety.  Complete with warty taint.

Lovelock: And regardless, I stand by what I said.

[...]

The aforementioned disgusting scene, of calf being forcefully extracted from the cow’s unwilling vagina was long and intense.  It also featured Farmer Dan swinging a baby calf around like a lasso.  And then, as expected, he was bitten.  Lovelock and Starkwell were on the edge of their seats.  There were some good scares.  I saw Lovelock jump a few times, although he CLAIMS he had the hiccups.

[...]

Starkwell: Farmer Dan is the fucking man.

[...]

Veterinarian Orla tried to use some sort of cow killing tool to off the calf, now that they have concluded that the experiment has gone wrong.  She “misses” and mother and calf freak the fuck out.  It is a heartbreaking and disturbing scene, and Lovelock has gone from scared to crying.  He now claims that the hiccups have made his eyes water.  Eventually she finishes the job and conducts a baby cow autopsy.  The effects are remarkable and FUCKING GROSS.  Sometime between smoke spitting out of the calf’s gut and Orla finding still living mutant foetuses inside the baby cow, Starkwell had to run to the bathroom to vomit.  Twice.

[...]

[One of the weird centipede alien looking cow foetuses moves.]

Lovelock: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

[Orla mentions to keep the other animals away from the weird shit, for risk of infection.]

Starkwell: Soooo… Orla and Dan could be infected.

Lovelock: I think I love this movie.  Minus how many times you’ve puked.  And all of the cow vagina.

[...]

Apparently the drifters are running from her family.  It’s a forbidden romance angle.  Awesome.  Once Dan finds this out, he lets them fully hide out on his land, so they won’t be found.  Lovelock then repeated Starkwell’s statement about Farmer Dan being the fucking man.

[...]

[Infected Dan pukes, Infected Jamie is bad at sex with Mary.]

Lovelock: I know I SAID I love this movie, but I want it to go somewhere… something needs to happen… NOW!

[Weird Centipede Alien Cow Foetus Thing crawls into bed with Mary and Jamie and tries to… I think… PENETRATE and/or EAT Mary.]

Lovelock: TOO MUCH! TOO MUCH!

[Evil Scientist says no one can leave and quarantines the farm.  They go searching for these Weird Centipede Alien Cow Foetus Things... in the dark... in the mud.]

Lovelock: Jussssssst right. 

[...]

After finding Dead Orla, Evil Scienist realizes that the Infected people, infected through a bite, would actually propagate more of these THINGS through the world, and basically wipe out the planet.  Then Evil Scientist uses the cow kill tool on Jamie and explodes his brain.  Lovelock let out a mild shriek.

[...]

[Evil Scientist gets the shit eaten out of him by the, now much bigger, mutated Thing.]

Lovelock: …

Starkwell: Fffff…

[...]

Clearly not REALLY a zombie movie in the traditional sense, since the infected people are more like incubators for these horrifying Things (think "Alien" but with mutant cows), the fact that it is spread by the bite was enough to satisfy Lovelock and Starkwell’s test.  Mary eventually found a cow that was oozing these Things out of its vagina every minute or so.  And, since they showed it, with a nice close-up, it was definitely enough to send Starkwell back to the porcelain for another round.  Why did he eat that yogurt after puking the first time, knowing there was still an hour left in the movie?

[...]

Lovelock: This movie is fucked.

[...]

I won’t spoil the end.  Just take Lovelock’s final statement as a beautiful stamp of approval.  I couldn’t get Starkwell’s final reaction, since he was off hugging the bowl.  The film is not without its problems and unresolved issues (why did it really matter that their love was forbidden, what happened to the experiments... etc.), but it is a good effort and a shockingly gross piece of work.  AND THERE’S A TWIST!