So, last night I watched
Against the Dark, a zombie apocalypse movie with Steven Seagal. Which was apparently supposed to be a Seagal vs. vampires movie, which might be kind of cool...but it was so cheesy bad. There's a couple spoilers here, but really, it's hard to spoil something this bad, so I wouldn't worry about it.
To start with, Seagal makes all these bizarre heroic one-liners out of the blue for no apparent reason presented in the script. It's like there is missing dialogue he is responding to, or he's somehow telepathic and just KNOWS what is going on in places he isn't, or there are entire scenes that have been cut out to which the lines might refer.
For example, right at the start of the movie, he kills some zombies, saves a kid and then says, "We're not here to judge who's right and wrong. We're here to decide who lives and dies."
Um, what? Ok? Who wanted to judge right and wrong? WHATNOW?
Later, he randomly walks into a room where one of the survivors is about to be cut-open by a non-zombie madman, and makes a quip to this mad doctor as though he JUST KNEW what the fuck was going on in the room. Seagal's line implies that he knows this guy he's never seen before--strapped to the table--had been kidnapped and he is there to save him, that he knows all about the mad doctor's experiments though he's never seen him before either, etc.
It's eye-poppingly weird.
Plus, if you watch this movie to see Seagal fighting? Don't bother. He doesn't. The fight scenes aren't even up to the level of "hokey". Most of them are barely fight scenes. I think Seagal moves a little bit during a couple of them (seriously), but this is not a "Steven Seagal fights shit with impressive martial arts" movie. Sadly. Then it might at least have been worth watching.
Also, the narrative consistency of the plot is...well, there isn't much of one. First, the narrator informs us that there is no cure or immunity. Then just after that, we find out there IS immunity. Ooookaaaay...which is it? Who knows! It never matters anyway!
You'll also quickly notice that, for some reason, the hospital the survivors are wandering through is REALLY REALLY hard to get out of...even though they got into it easily, and there's no real reason it should be so difficult to get out of. But Seagal's team of zombie-hunters doesn't seem to have the same problems moving around in it as the survivor group does.
Another thing to note is that the plot apparently doesn't know if they're in a hospital above ground, or in tunnels below ground. It keeps changing its mind, as do the actors when they talk about it. Hospital. Tunnels. Hospital. Tunnels. The movie would actually have made more sense if they were in tunnels below the ground, but it keeps showing this shot of the outside of a large hospital building, and the protagonists all refer to it over-and-over as a hospital building, and to windows, etc.
Regarding that plot: they are all trying to make it to THE exit, as though there is JUST ONE. Yes, THE exit. For some reason, getting out the same way either group came in can't be done...why? No clue! It's just "they'll be TRAPPED if they can't make it to that exit!" Which is ultimately an extremely contrived way to create super-fake tension; the plot pretty much stands right up and screams, "Yo! Right here! See me? Yo!" and waves its arms around so you don't miss it, ever, throughout the whole movie.
OK, so these are hallways/tunnels, right? Somehow, people lose each other completely despite having been in the same hallway together two seconds ago. One person will be grabbed and pulled into a room, and fight some zombies, and will then somehow be SPLIT UP from the rest of the group...who are no longer in the hallway? What? And must have gone REALLY REALLY far and forgotten how to get back because they then spend most of the movie trying to find each other when this happens.
I am assuming the hospital is a giant maze with moving walls and doors that don't lead to the same place twice (I mean, that's what I figure, it's the only logical explanation for what happens in the movie, knowing how the laws of time and space usually work).
Similarly, people were constantly being shown as split up, for no apparent reason, then back together for no reason, and then actually splitting up for no good reason. "We're walking ten feet behind you. Oops! We're completely separated and in entirely different places now for no discernible reason!" and "Don't worry, we're here to protect you and guide you out of here. Here's a gun, take a left, and we'll go do something else. Don't get yourselves killed on your own!" Wait, what?
It was all just bizarrely stupid.
Finally, the zombies talk out of the blue, mid-movie. At least one does. Apparently they're learning to reason. But not very well, because the talking ones still walk right up to people holding shotguns and make mean faces at them instead of doing something reasonable like running. Especially since they don't have any super zombie powers like not dying if they're shot or stabbed. Which makes them very stupid talking zombies who-think-they're-better-than-people. Also, apparently they're really VAMPIRES! Except not. No, they're MUTANTS! Wait, what is going on in this movie again?
Again, so cheesy bad. Just outright poor writing, directing, and editing. The acting isn't exactly what we would call "good", either, but with crap like this to work with, I can't blame any of the actors for the stiff, contrived, or one-dimensional performances.
Now, there were a few moments in the movie that were actually creepy or interesting.
- Like an early scene where one of the zombie-vampire-mutant-whatever cuts open a hanging corpse and drains the blood into coffee cup for some morning red java. - The moment when the survivors look at all the food they've gathered on a table, the shot had a "last supper" feeling to it.
- And the scene where a lurking zombie-vampire-mutant-whatever slips out of the shadows and starts acting like some weird surrogate father figure to the little girl sleeping in her blanket, eventually getting all gentle-creepy with a "I'm going to eat you" look.
But that's really
about it.
If you watch the Cast & Crew interviews, they all think this was was possibly one of the best horror movies ever...I can't begin to imagine what drugs they were taking during filming or, gods-forbid, during screening, to think that. Not unless the movie they filmed was not the movie that ended up being produced.
I usually want nachos with this much cheese.
It deserves to be MST3K'd.
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