Zombie Hunter - DVD

Content: A new drug has turned the Earth into a post-apocalyptic zombie world. There are few survivors and some of them have turned into crazed cannibals by consuming infected human flesh. Hunter (Martin Copping) is one of the few healthy survivors. He's been fending for himself for a year now, battling not only zombies and man-eaters, but also his inner demons. When, after all these months as a loner, he comes across a group of survivors trying to make their way to an airstrip to escape by plane to a deserted island, Hunter decides to join them. But their careful preparations are abruptly interrupted by a man-eater attack, and it now seems impossible for the group to put their plan into action just yet. But if there's one thing Hunter has learned over the past few months, it's to never give up and fight to the last breath...

Zombie Hunter tries its best to craft a cool, entertaining zombie apocalypse. The idea that not only the zombies, but also the humans who eat from their flesh out of starvation, become a deadly threat to the few normal survivors is really well done and gives the film a lot of potential. However, director Kevin King only manages to use this adequately to a very limited extent. He never seems to be able to decide if his Zombie Hunter should be a grindhouse comedy in the style of Planet Terror or a more straightforward zombie movie. In some scenes, the decision seems clearly made in favor of the trashy grindhouse look. But in the moments where it counts, King doesn't pull off this style consistently enough and becomes far too well-behaved and conventional to still achieve the coolness of other over-the-top grindhouse homages - and that despite having Machete himself on board.

However, even though Danny Trejo graces the cover of the DVD, his role turns out to be relatively small and unspectacular. Trejo may deliver a really good performance, but overall he keeps himself too much in the background to really be considered one of the main actors. The rest of the cast can't make up for this shortcoming, as they all seem almost as lifeless as the undead they have to fight. However, this is not only due to the actors' lack of talent, but also to the very clichéd dialogues that are put into their mouths by the script.

In the scenes where things are a bit calmer and these dialogues are in the foreground, Zombie Hunter is then unfortunately a complete flop - even if you try to see the whole thing as an exaggerated irony. But when it comes to fighting zombies or the maniacal cannibals, the entertainment value of this low budget production soars. And thanks to some well-done gore effects and nice touches, fans of the genre can actually really enjoy the whole thing here. That still doesn't make Zombie Hunter a really good movie. But the complete crash landing, towards which it heads in some moments, can at least be avoided. Therefore, the bottom line is then, with some deductions, for fans of deliberately trashy horror fare still a: worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: The image of the DVD features a somewhat undercooled, reduced color scheme, which, however, captures well the end-time feeling of the film. The image sharpness is in many moments on a good level, only reveals in some darker scenes small weaknesses in the detail representation. The audio is available in both a decent Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, as well as a slightly weaker stereo track. The dialogue is very powerful and centrally mixed in both cases. Then here and there, especially with the DD 5.1 mix, smaller and larger sound effects make decent use of the surround channels. Good!

Extras: Bonus material has the DVD unfortunately not to offer.

Conclusion:Zombie Hunter is admittedly not quite as cool and clever as the film would like to be. And even Danny Trejo, who graces the cover, plays far too small a role to really be considered a leading man. But at least there are some quite successful action interludes and nice gore moments, so that the film could offer genre fans who like it a bit trashier, quite entertaining entertainment. Technically the DVD is well done, but unfortunately there is no bonus material. Bottom line, no clear buy recommendation, but with deductions still worth seeing!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp