Isle of the Dead

• USA • 2016 • 90m •

• Directed by: Nick Lyon. • Starring: Joey Lawrence, Maryse Mizanin, Todd Cattell, D.C. Douglas, Connor Bellina, Paige Lauren Billiot, Kyle Butenhoff, Josh Crotty, Rydell Danzie, Jennifer Elizabeth, Akanimo Eyo, Eric St. John, Dutch-Barre Johnson. • Music by: Christopher Cano, Chris Ridenhour.

A military squad is sent to a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean in order to secure top secret records involving a zombie epidemic that wiped out the large scientific team experimenting with various test chemicals and toxins which leads to the team battling not only zombies, but the lone surviving scientist who has plans for the future of the human race.

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Trailer

1:23

Review:

The actors did a good job with the script they were given. The scientist wants to preserve scientific data, the soldiers want to kill everything and get out, and the mad scientist wants to continue his work. The usual stuff.

It's the video editing that I had the biggest problem with. There's one scene where Lawrence is running through the "jungle" and we see a highway behind him and a car zip by. I assume they were supposed to CGI that out, or maybe put CGI zombies in the car, but they must have spent the entire CGI budget on the bugs, which had nothing to do with the main plot. Either the director had to limit the bugs plot device due to time and budget constraints or added it as an afterthought. That scene could have been fixed by simply cutting it just before the highway comes into view. And another scene shows an attack helicopter flying in instead of a transport. I was wondering if the military had sent that one to give them cover fire, but no, it was just an amateur mistake. Maybe it was a placeholder scene that was supposed to be replaced by the CGI transport chopper that brought them in.

The director had a serious problem with continuity. The guy leading the soldiers gets ambushed but nobody can find him, despite him pointing out seconds earlier that they all had transmitters so they could be found. The mad scientist has a horde of zombies eating him, but apparently he regenerated his eaten flesh so he could run off and fight the lead uber zombie. Since the infected don't normally eat other infected in these types of movies, it would have made more sense for the rest of the zombies to have ignored him and just had the fight scene. That would also have explained how he was able to move around the island without being swarmed and he had told them he used a special path to cover up his condition at the time. People finding a small device that was dropped during a fight on a large island. And while it is actually possible to fit a nuclear device into something as small as a tank shell or shoulder fired rocket, using one at that close a range is usually suicide. It was done purely for the "put us out of our misery" drama.

There were some good scenes. One soldier trying to pull a zombie off another pulls the zombie's arms off. The infected screaming in agony instead of the typical staggering around going "I don't feel so good" and then poof, zombie. Zombies with machine guns. Could have done so much more with that. Zombie vs zombie fist fights. And the touching zombie daddy loves his zombie daughter and is sorry for what happened, while zombie daughter gives him "get away from me" looks.

Not a bad movie overall, but an occasional "woah" from Lawrence would have made it better.

Review by lagg-62160 from the Internet Movie Database.