Day 37: The Video Dead

The Video Dead

Do kids today even know what video is?

There are many ways a movie can be bad. The story, the acting, the directing, the dialogue; all of these can make a movie painful to watch. Rarely do all of these factors come together to form one big pile of awfulness. The Video Dead is the perfect storm of bad comedy and terrible horror.

This movie is so bad, I almost don't want to bother writing out the “plot”. Two young teenagers move into their new house. Their parents are in Saudi Arabia, I guess because of work, I'm not really sure and it doesn't matter. Jeff discovers an old TV in the attic that turns on by itself with strange broadcasts. Zombies crawl out of the TV and reek havoc on the neighbor hood. They don't eat people, they just kill them in ridiculous ways. A Texan named Joshua Daniels explains the evil television and that the zombies kill because people show fear and goes with Jeff out into the woods to stop the zombies. Turns out they're not very good at it since the zombies come back to the house and attack Zoe. Zoe shows no fear and invites the zombies in. She traps them in the basement and they get sucked back into the TV.

My prices are so low, you'll think I'm dead!

The Video Dead is painful to watch. The story itself is just plain bad. I can suspend my disbelief and let stuff that doesn't make sense slide, but nothing in this movie makes sense. Logic took a holiday when they wrote this movie and when logic came back, they beat it to death with clubs. These zombies don't eat people, just kill them. What kind of zombies do that? Apparently, these are the softest zombies ever because Joshua stops them with arrows to the body. At one point, Jeff is suspended from a tree, I guess as bait, and the zombies use branches to try to poke at him. Maybe they thought they could crack him open like a pinata and play around in his gooey innards. Ever see a zombie running with a chainsaw? You have now.

Why do the zombies kill people in the most complicated ways? Why do they laugh? Why do these kids let some strange guy in their house? If Joshua knew the television was evil and would kill people, why the hell did mail it instead of destroying it or dropping it in the ocean? Where is the police? Why does no one lock their doors? Why is everyone so stupid?! It's not like I'm over-thinking things. These are basic questions that shouldn't even exist because they are so basic!

Not pictured: Logic

The acting is absolutely horrific. The lines are delivered with the fluidity of Jell-o. There's more emotion in rocks. They would have been better off grabbing people off the street to be in this movie. The directing is just as bad. Close-ups are too close, shots linger for too long while others exist for no reason. To the movie's credit, there is some decent killing and gore, but even that has it's own baffling moments. A zombie is cut in half with a chainsaw and inside are 2 living rats. What. The. Hell. The makeup is decent, considering how bad everything else is in this movie.

When watching a zombie movie, you expect some rules to be followed. Take away almost all of them, and you're left with little more than a slow slasher movie. The story, the acting, the directing are all horrifically bad. I am fairly certain I have spent more time on this review than they did working on this movie. Other than a few good kills and some wonderfully 80's music, there is no saving grace for The Video Dead. You're better off punching yourself in the side of the head than sitting through this.

2/10