Dead Air (2009) Dir. by Corbin Bernsen
Logan Burnhardt is the ego-king of the airwaves, but his unflappable persona is put to the test when a terrorist bio-attack unleashes a plague of flesh-ripping maniacs on Los Angeles.
Corbin Bernsen's first attempt at Directing horror is mediocre at best. Bernsen is a well known actor stretching back to the 80's and I am a bit of a fan of his. I thoroughly enjoy his roll as the father on "Psych" on USA Network. All you horror fans might remember him as THE DENTIST!!! or THE DENTIST 2!!! haha. I haven't seen either of the other two films he has directed, but I know neither of them are horror movies. Corbin seemed to do an OK job with Dead Air, but I don't know if I really liked the way they took it. I understand they were trying to hit on hard topics like religion and politics, but I just felt like that might have slowed the film down a little too much. It really killed the tension of on air descriptions that drove Pontypool to be so great. It definitely had plenty of action mixed in there, but many of the "fight" scenes seemed to be poorly executed or poorly choreographed. I found them to be awkward and unrealistic looking. I get it, it's supposed to be a low budget horror movie, but that doesn't mean you try your hardest to make it look bad. I have seen people do it better with a hell of a lot less money.
The acting in the film was all pretty mild. I didn't feel like there were any strong stand out performances. The always likable Bill Moseley probably gave the best performance of the film, but Navid Negahban as Abir the terrorist wasn't too far behind. Other than those two core characters, there was a whole lot of crap acting. I found it hard to feel for any of the characters other than those two and maybe Gil (the awesome David Moscow!). There were some unique special effects in the film, but I felt like they could have done a bit more with it. If you are going to have that many people getting ripped apart by the living dead, at least have some better special effects. Overall, I felt the movie was worth one watch, but it isn't something I'm going to rush out to buy. I am getting a little wore out on mild zombie flicks now. I really need someone to come along and give us something ground breakingly original again. I know it is alot to ask for, but as one of the biggest zombie fans in the world (my opinion only probably,haha), I feel like I deserve it!
Entertainment Value: 6/10 Chemical filled bombs
Cinematic Value: 5/10 Chemical filled bombs
2 comments:
I thought Moseley's performance as a "Shock jock" was amazing. Had it not been for him, I would have hated this flick. I said in my review a few months back that I felt like the "zombie action" was interrupting my enjoyment of the filck. Had this been 90 minutes of Moseley taking calls, I would have loved every second of it.
Had it been Pontypool, I would have loved it, haha. :-)
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