"Maggie" (2015)

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Abigail Breslin and Joely Richardson
Written by John Scott 3
Directed by Henry Hobson
Rated PG-13 — Frightening images
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Trailer

Society teeters on the edge of recovery from a major outbreak of a zombie virus, and strict quarantine and curfew rules are in place. Wade Vogel (Arnold Schwarzenegger) travels from his farm to the city to pick up his daughter, who has been infected. The virus takes several weeks to fully transform the infected, so Wade is allowed to take Maggie (Abigail Breslin) home for her final days, thanks to a favor from a doctor friend.

But as Maggie gets sicker, and the day approaches when Maggie is required to report back to quarantine for termination, Wade struggles with the decision. Will he hand over his daughter to be killed by the government, or will he hold on to her as long as some part is still human, no matter the consequences?

'Fear The Walking Dead' - Season One (2015)

Starring Kim Dickens, Cliff Curtis and Frank Dillane
Created by Robert Kirkman and Dave Erickson
Trailer

A sickness is spreading over the sprawling city of Los Angeles. High school guidance counselor Maddy Clark (Kim Dickens) and her boyfriend, English lit teacher Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis), are having a spot of trouble. Maddy's son, Nick (Frank Dillane) is a heroin addict, and he's disappeared. The next they hear of him, he's in the hospital having been hit by a car. Nick tells a tale of waking up to see his girlfriend eating another addict in the abandoned church where they shoot up.

At the same time, one of Maddy's students tells her about a sickness sweeping the nation that everyone seems to be underestimating. He warns her that things are about to change for the worse, and Maddy's not sure he's making it up.

When chaos explodes in downtown, Travis and Maddy prepare to take their family out of the city. Standing between them and safety in the desert are rioters, the crumbling LA authority structure... and a growing army of the undead.

"Dead Snow: Red vs Dead" (2014)

Starring Vegar Hoel, Orjan Gamst and Martin Starr
Written by Tommy Wirkola, Stig Frode Henriksen and Vegar Hoel
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
Rated R - Strong violence and language
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Trailer

Following the events of the first film, Martin (Vegar Hoel) barely manages to escape the Nazi zombies that killed all his friends on their mountain vacation in Norway. He crashes his car, and is brought to a nearby hospital where he's horrified to hear upon waking up that not only is he being charged with the murders of all his friends, but also that the doctors say they've reattached his severed arm. The only problem with that is it's not his arm they found — it's Herzog's, (Orjan Gamst) the zombie leader. The arm turns out to be super-strong and have something of a mind of its own and a lust for blood.

To find out why, Martin contacts the Zombie Squad, a group of Americans he thinks will be able to help him kill the zombies once and for all. The Squad, led by Daniel (Martin Starr) is actually just a trio of nerds who have seen too many movies, but they come to Norway anyway. Along with a World War II museum guide named Glenn (Stig Frode Henriksen), they'll have to figure out a way to stop Herzog from completing the last mission given to him by Hitler decades earlier: the destruction of an entire town as revenge for sabotaging Nazi war plans.

'The Walking Dead' Season Four (2013)

Starring Andrew Lincoln, David Morrissey and Norman Reedus
Developed by Frank Darabont
Executive Producers Robert Kirkman, David Alpert, Scott Gimple, Greg Nicotero, Tom Luse and Gale Anne Hurd
Trailer

Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) has settled into the quiet life of a farmer. He and his son Carl (Chandler Riggs) are now just citizens of a small community of survivors living inside a fortified prison. Inside the prison, danger is brewing. A strange sickness threatens everyone inside, and soon after two of their own are found murdered, one of which is Karen, Tyreese's girlfriend. The disease forces Tyreese (Chad Coleman), Michonne (Danai Gurira), Darryl (Norman Reedus) and Bob (Lawrence Gilliard Jr.) to seek out medicines at a veterinary college. Meanwhile, Rick decides he has to deal with the culprit - his close friend, Carol (Melissa McBride) - by expelling her from the prison before Tyreese returns and learns the truth.

Outside the fences, hordes of flesh-hungry undead wander the countryside. But they're not alone: The Governor (David Morrissey) survived his last encounter months earlier with Rick and the others, and has gathered a new group of supporters to his cause. These people are desperate. They are well-armed. And Rick has something they want: a strong fence.

"World War Z" (2013)

Starring Brad Pitt, Mirielle Enos and James Badge Dale
Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard
Directed by Marc Forster
Rated PG-13 - Zombie violence, peril, language, frightening situations
Running Time: 116 Minutes
Trailer

Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is a former investigator for the United Nations who left his job to spend more time with his wife Karen (Mirielle Enos) and children. One day, an outbreak of an unknown virus spreads quickly across the entire world and Gerry and his family are caught in a riot in Philadelphia. Gerry witnesses a man bitten by another person, and then sees that man reanimated as some sort of flesh-eating creature in under fifteen seconds.

Escaping Philly, Gerry is contacted by his old boss Thierry Warmbrunn (Ludi Boekin) who offers Gerry's family safe passage aboard a UN vessel in exchange for his help tracking down the source of the infection. Gerry and a team of United States Navy SEALs heads to South Korea to investigate a memo dated a week earlier that may be one of the earliest mentions of the outbreak. As the world's governments crumble and the population is being turned into ravenous, bloodthirsty zombies, Gerry and his dwindling group of allies must discover the source of the outbreak and, hopefully, find a cure before it's too late...

'The Walking Dead' Season One (2010)

Starring Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal and Sarah Wayne Callies
Developed by Frank Darabont

Anyone who knows me knows my love of Robert Kirkman's THE WALKING DEAD.  That's right, I love it so much that I usually type the title entirely in capital letters.  I can't help it.  Every time a volume of this comic book series comes out, I rush to get it ASAP.  When I heard they were developing a TV series based on it, I was immediately intrigued.

When I heard that it was being developed for AMC by Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Mist") and Gale Anne Hurd ("The Terminator," "Aliens") and that comic series creator Robert Kirkman would not only be a producer but a member of the writing staff... I couldn't have been more excited.

And now that the show has premiered, I still couldn't be more excited.  The premiere episode, "Days Gone Bye" is simply a fine hour of television.  It was so good, I watched it twice in a row.

Andrew Lincoln stars as Rick Grimes, a sheriff's deputy who is wounded in the line of duty.  He falls into a coma, and when he awakens nearly a month later, he's shocked to discover that society has collapsed and hordes of the dead roam the Earth.  Rick manages to escape the hospital and make his way to his home, only to discover that his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and son Carl (Chandler Riggs) are nowhere to be found.  Instead, Rick finds Morgan (Lennie James) and his son Duane who have been squatting in the house next door.  Morgan explains to Rick what has been going on, and about "the walkers."

"Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane" (2007)

"Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane" (2007)
Starring David Chisum, Erick Avari, and Richard Tyson
Written by Sydney Iwanter and Mark Onspaugh
Directed by Scott Thomas

This movie should've just been called "Zombies on a Plane" to capitalize on the "Snakes on a Plane" web craze.  Someone also should have written, "I've had it with these muthafuckin zombies on this muthafuckin PLANE" somewhere into the script.  But alas, what we get is what we get.

And what we get is Zombies on a Plane.  Imagine every obvious cliched story beat or character you might want to put in a movie like this, and it pretty much happens.  The plane is flying into a nasty thunderstorm?  Check.  The pilot is two days to retirement?  Check.  Two young couples on a romantic getaway to Paris?  Infidelity among said couples?  Check.  Possibly dangerous prisoner being transported by a US Marshal?  Check.  A douche-y celebrity in first class?  Check.

Badass dude in a silly hat with the skillz necessary to re-deadify the living dead?

Fuckin' check.

Of course, I can't remember what any of these characters were named.  To me, they're all just types.  The plot is just as paint-by-numbers as the characterization - the US government is transporting a super-secret virus sample (incubated in the body of a woman for some reason) in the cargo hold of a commercial airliner.  After adverse weather conditions allows the woman to escape, the virus takes hold and she begins to turn the other passengers into vicious, bloodthirsty zombies.  The government, of course, decides that their only course of action is to shoot down the plane, lest the virus get free and pose a danger to the civilian population.

Why they didn't concern themselves with danger to civilians before loading their dangerous cargo into the belly of a commercial jetliner is never explained.

Loaded with cliches and low-budget special effects, "Flight of the Living Dead" actually isn't terrible.  I mean, it's certainly not a good movie.  But its flaws are also what make it so viciously entertaining.  The plot makes no sense, the characters are stupid and the zombie effects look pretty cheap by most standards... and yet you sort of can't help but laugh at the whole thing and how ridiculous it all is.  Everything about it is obvious, so if you're ever surprised by anything in this movie, then, well, you're pretty stupid.  The humor of it all comes from that very stupidity, coupled with some fun zombie kills.

As a side note, we watched "Flight of the Living Dead" immediately after watching "The Room," and some of the bits in "Flight" are made funnier because of that - mostly concerned the two cheating young travelers.  Whenever the two discuss their infidelity, we were cracking jokes with dialogue from "The Room" and it just drove us into fits of laughter.

So this is another bad movie.  It's more competently made than "The Room" for sure, but it's still entertaining because it's not any good.

"Dead Snow" (2009)

"Dead Snow" (2009)
Starring Vegar Hoel, Stig Henriksen and Charlotte Frogner
Written by Stig Henriksen and Tommy Wirkola
Directed by Tommy Wirkola

"Dead Snow" starts out like your typical young kids take a trip to a scary cabin in the woods story. As such, it takes a while to get going, but once it does, it's a non-stop, hilarious bit of violent camp. We're introduced to the main cast quickly as they make their way up a mountain to their friend Sara's cabin, far outside cellular range and miles from the nearest neighbors.

What they don't know is that Sara had arrived earlier and already been killed by the vicious creatures that inhabit the area - the reanimated remains of a garrison of World War II Nazi soldiers searching for treasure they had stolen from the locals sixty years earlier before dying in the mountains.

Of course, this treasure is buried directly under the cabin. Why is never explained, but frankly it doesn't particularly matter. Once the violence starts, any kind of plot just plain disappears. But again, once the violence starts, you'll be having so much fun nothing else matters. There are some brutal, well-made kills in "Dead Snow", and to describe any of them in any kind of real detail would just ruin the entire experience.

There are a few places in the movie where budgetary limitations rear their ugly head, but it rarely gets in the way of the enjoyment. "Dead Snow" is loaded with all kinds of fun violence, some witty one-liners and a few genuinely creepy situations. If you're looking for a good, fun-filled zombie romp, if you can't pass up the idea of ZOMBIE. NAZIS. then look no further - "Dead Snow" is for you.