Movie Review: Rise of the Zombie

There are film-makers who want to make a re-make and then there are those who want to unleash their fantasy on screen.

Rise of The Zombie falls in the latter category.

Neil Parker (Luke Kenny) is a wildlife photographer whose love-life has come to a standstill because his girlfriend Vinny (Kirti Kulhari) has had enough of his ‘frequent visits’ to the jungles where there has been no contact with him. He is consumed by his passion for photography. She decides she has had enough.

Stunned that his ‘live-in’ girlfriend could do this to him, Neil takes off for another trip into the dense forests. The location is not revealed to the viewer. The number plate of the taxi reads UK… with some numbers. It definitely is not the United Kingdom, nor is it Umer Khadi!

Anyways, Neil gets bitten by an insect and this bite festers as the days progress. This leads him to hallucinate and to finally become an insect and man-eating monster.

But what does not fit into the script is this; why does he not show his wound to a doctor? Every day, he visits the town for some supplies or to make a call. Which man in his right mind would ignore such a wound? Beats me!

What also beats me is that he makes a number of calls to his girlfriend from a public mobile phone. Obviously it goes to her answering machine since she does not recognize the number. He tries desperately to call her but never leaves a message. Understandable, there are many who do not want to talk to a machine.

But herein lies the funny bit; Vinny never once calls the number trying to get in touch with her. It is only when she realizes that Neil is missing for over two weeks that she tries to investigate. She also tells her friend that she received many blank calls from a particular number!

That apart, Neil’s insect eating episodes are overdone to the point of making it repulsive. I mean it can also be repulsive when shown once. For a horror genre, these scenes do fit the bill, but showing it again and again and again defies logic.

Later, the entire town is infected and we are told that in 2014 there will be The Land of the Zombies!

Luke Kenny is a brave man to venture in this category for his maiden venture (production). This film has also been co-directed by him. As an artist, he gets into the character; be it as a jilted lover as well as a man-eating monster. Kirti Kulhari who has but a few scenes manages to make her presence felt with her arresting personality. Her dialogue delivery and body language too are noteworthy. She is completely ‘in the scene’ whenever she is on the screen.

If Devaki Singh the other director and also the writer of the film had taken care of the above-mentioned loopholes, who knows, this could have been India’s best horror film till date.

Rating: 2 / 5

Martin D’Souza

This first appeared on glamsham.com on April 05, 2013