Zombies the Beginning (2007)

Tell me if this story doesn’t sound a bit familiar.  A woman scientist is found floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean.  She was a member of a corporation ship that was investigating a facility that the company has lost contact with.  The company basically yells at her for the loss of the ship, even after she describes the terrible monsters that wiped out her crew.  Later after suffering from nightmares the company comes to her and asks that she accompany a military unit to investigate what happened.  After they are all introduced they arrive on the island and discover zombies are all over the place.  They know this because they can track their movement on their motion detectors.  You know there is more but if you haven’t figured out that this is an Aliens rip off with zombies yet you never will.  You know how Aliens ended?  Then no need to continue here. 

This is schlock Italian director Bruno Mattei’s last movie and he went out like he spent most of his career, making terrible movies!  Now don’t get me wrong I really am a fan of Mattei, but I’ll freely admit that his movies are nothing more than inferior retreads of successful movies.  His career is full of movies where not only plots, but also actual dialogue and music have been lifted from other much better made and more successful movies.  As I’ve already mentioned this movie is basically a cheaply made rip off of the story from Aliens with zombies filling in as the monsters.  Now the fact that the entire story is basically a rip off doesn’t automatically make it bad.  What makes this movie bad is the fact that it takes too long to get to the action.  Before they get to the island we are forced to watch the same boring dream sequence again and again.  When the action actually begins we are treated to again repetitive slow motion “action” shots of the zombie fights.   Toss in some terrible dialogue and you have a movie that ends up being surprisingly boring.  Even a great bit with a random zombie midget can’t save this movie! 

For a bigger budgeted movie the gore and special effects aren’t really impressive.  We do get hordes of decent looking zombies and some blood spray, but nothing too memorable.  Heck the only real memorable thing about the effects is the zombie fetus bursting from the pregnant woman’s stomach.  I only remembered that because it pretty much cemented the whole Aliens rip off vibe of the movie for me. 

Now I didn’t expect this movie to be original or groundbreaking.  I knew that being a Bruno Mattei film that was not going to happen.  But given how much fun I’ve had with his movies in the past I didn’t expect Zombies the Beginning to be as slow and boring as it ended up being.  There isn’t an official U.S. release yet so this falls in to the bootleg/import category.  It really just isn’t worth the time or cost involved.  I don’t recommend this one at all. 

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer