New Releases for Tuesday, September 29, 2020

The Dead Ones

Genre: Horror

Directed by: Jeremy Kasten

Run time: 73 minutes

Rating: Unrated

Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: Look, no one loves weird, gory little films more than me.

I will champion them, sing their praises, encourage and even browbeat people to watch them.

But there is a catch. One small requirement. A tiny toll fee, if you will.

Such movies have to be smart. They need to make sense. They can’t just throw a bunch of shite together and call it a horror film and expect to bask in a cavalcade of praise.

Which is why it pains me to report that The Dead Ones fails to meet any of our criteria.

Ostensibly a movie about random school violence, The Dead Ones doesn’t so much introduce its rag-tag band of four detention-bound misanthropes as just assign them each some annoying quality.

Don’t even get me started on their “punishment,” which is basically to clean up a high school after a brutal shooting spree. There is no way, absolutely none, in the real world, where juveniles would be sent into a facility that still resembled an active crime scene.

And then there are the Four Horsemen stalking and haunting the students.

I went into The Dead Ones with high hopes, but the film just isn’t interested in creating the kind of active information exchange that might forge a meaningful connection between viewer and movie. Some of you may not need that, but I sure do, which is why I never finished the film.

The Stuff You Care About: Hot chicks – Sure.

Nudity – No. Gore – Yes.

Drug use – Yes.

Bad Guys/Killers – Good question.

Buy/Rent – Neither.

Also Available:

Ghost Ship: Collector’s Edition

The Legend of Tomiris

Thomas and the Magic Railroad: 20th Anniversary Edition

Now on Video-on-Demand:

Alien Addiction (Gravitas Ventures, 95 minutes, Unrated, Video-on-Demand): This New Zealand import promises a fresh, and funny, take on alien encounters.

We weren’t able to commit to a viewing, but if you check it out and love it, please let us know.