Paul Magne Haakonsen
Well, the idea behind "Rise of the Damned" was interesting enough, however, it was just not brought to the screen in a great manner. The movie was suffering horribly from a lack of constant lighting. Most of the movie was shot in under-lit situations, which really brought down the enjoyment of the movie, as you could hardly see what was going on most of the time.The story in "Rise of the Damned" is about a group of young people who go to an old abandoned mental hospital to shoot a movie. But they find out that the hospital is housing a dark, sinister secret.Story-wise, then "Rise of the Damned" was adequate, although it is all something that have been seen before. Seen before, ironic I guess, as in this movie you hardly could see anything at all. But joking aside, it is a simple straight forward story that has a couple of twists here and there, but is otherwise fairly generic for a movie of this type. Nothing new or innovating to be found in this movie.The acting was alright, and people did good jobs with their given roles and characters. And it was a cast of fairly unfamiliar faces, to me at least, so that was nice to have a movie with actors with no prior roles hanging over their heads. The only one I recognized was Luis Guzmán.For a zombie movie, then "Rise of the Damned" is not your average run of the mill living dead movie. It has some interesting enough approaches and ideas for the zombie genre. Just a shame that it was never brought out in proper lighting.I was going to give the movie a 5/10 rating because it is a fairly average horror / zombie movie, but given the inadequate lighting, the rating dropped down to 4/10.As an avid horror and zombie fan, I wouldn't really recommend this movie to anyone, because if you are like me then the constant darkness of this movie will just cause frustration and irritation, rather than work to add mood and scares.
Joel Waite
Six years after a violent car crash claimed her parent's lives, Jesse is still trying to put her life back together. The situation is complicated by the fact that her parents virtually vanished, as did the accident wreckage, so there's no evidence for the police and certainly no closure for her.Jesse meets her fears head-on when she and a group of filmmakers break into an abandoned mental institution, she immediately experiences a visceral deja-vu. The asylum seems somehow connected to her missing parents and furthermore, the building is far from deserted.The group discovers that a sinister doctor has taken up residence in the building's vast underground and he is using extreme science trying to bring his wife back from the dead! The basement also contains the countless remains of the doctor's failed experiments, all of which are now slowly coming back to life when they make contact with a murky substance that has begun to leak out of several holding tanks!
