DormoftheDead

Dorm of the Dead (2006)

Here is the story, as much as I can tell. There is a scientist guy that gets some Zombie blood from his “expedition” to someone’s backyard. He decides that the hot coed that he is diddling is a great test subject when she threatens to tell his wife. Somehow (and the movie never tries to explain how) she gets out and the zombies go munching along. After chowing down on an abusive boyfriend and his girl we then are introduced to Sarah, who is a vegan Goth girl that is having trouble paying for school. When the blonde bimbo she has been feuding with sees the scientist guy get killed by the zombies she takes the zombie blood and infects Sarah. More zombies randomly stumble around until they all get killed by a guy with an Uzi, credits roll and the movie is over. No I’m not kidding you.

My good friend and cohort here on the site, Jason “the animal” Payne loves to rip on independent cinema. Which is fine because that it is always fun to argue with him. But then I watch something like Dorm of the Dead and it makes Jason look like a genius. This movie is guilty of every half assed trick and gimmick that makes people hate low budget independent horror flicks. First of all regardless of budget if you are going to shoot a movie have a cohesive plot. If you don’t have enough plot to flesh out your main characters and need to a couple bad subplots to stretch out your runtime (to a whopping 75 minutes!) then you need to go back to the keyboard and work harder. As it is we are treated to long stretches of awkward dialogue that is inane and boring as hell. Second if you are going to write these long chunks of dialogue then you need to find actors that can actually deliver it without coming off as High School drama class drop outs. This is really annoying because as far as I can tell the only decent actress in the movie is Tiffany Shepis, who is killed off in the first 5 or 10 minutes and wanders around without dialogue! You hire someone who can act and don’t give them lines!

Lets talk some technical bits, shall we? I’m sure that in the vast piles of public domain music you could have found something better than the annoying techno music and Eastern European (perhaps Russian?) pop music that you decided to use. Oh and when you put music in a scene do you really need to have it so loud that you can’t hear the dialogue…. Um actually never mind that part. I also understand that you are making a low or no budget zombie movie, but how about some gore? Really the blood being tossed on the wall and a shirt getting ripped off just isn’t going to cut it. Here is a bit of philosophy for you. If you are going to make a zombie movie have some effects know how and budget. If you lack either perhaps you should be making a different movie. Two more things that I need to mention before I’m done with this review. If you can’t avoid the wind blowing so hard on the mic of your mom’s video camera that you can’t hear your actors then movie the scene inside or wait until things aren’t so windy. Also when editing a scene it is best that the 3 or 4 seconds that the actors are in frame waiting for their cue is cut out and not left in the final product.

The longer that I’ve been reviewing movies for Gutmunchers and other sites I’ve become more inclined to avoid reviewing movies that I’m just going to rip. Honestly it is a drag sitting thru them and then writing the review puts me in that vast category of negative horror fans that hang out on the net bitching about stuff. But sometimes I run across something that is so freaking bad like Dorm of the Dead that I need to warn people off. I mean in the end someone is trying to get horror fans to waste our time and money on a crap product like this. So I suppose I actually don’t feel that bad about letting everyone know to stay far away from this pile.

0 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer