Anyone who may have been following my reviews of indie zombie movie reviews may think that I’ve given up on them. I’ll be honest the last 3-4 have been harsh on the movies. It’s not due to being annoyed with indie zombie films though its because they really have just been painful to watch. Ninja Zombies, while it had flaws, is breaking that trend.
By no means a perfect movie it was an EXTREMELY enjoyable watch. I’ve been curious to see it since Paul did a Ninja Zombies Review earlier this year. What can I say. Mixing Ninjas and Zombies can’t be wrong (and if it is I don’t want to be right!)
Directed by Noah Cooper and written by both him and Michael Castro this is the first full length feature for both of them and honestly I hope it isn’t their last. While it clearly showed that their budget was on the low side it was a riot to watch.
The film takes a group of roommates who are suddenly stuck in a horrible situation. The lead character has been having nightmares about a historical Samurai who basnished a sword who could raise the dead. The nightmares prove to be a true memory from one of his ancestors. He finds this out when he turns 25 and is left a trunk that holds both an ancient samurai sword as well as a scroll that he can’t read.
One of the people in his building though is an otaku (anime obsessed) roommate who is able to slowly decipher the scroll and she finds out where to recover the sword from. The problem here is her love for her brother who recently died draws her to seek out the sword and use it to bring him back from the dead. Yes you got it – this is where the zombies come from. Due to her lack of mastery over the sword it isn’t just her brother that comes back and all of the corpses in the area (including a dead clan of ninja) are reanimated as a mix of both the traditional slow zombies and the now intelligent ninja zombies.
We get a mix or badly done action sequences (quite a few of them) that you’ll get a kick out of watching if you are into B movies. Yes the CGI blood they use can get a bit old by the end of the film and the music choices for fight scenes aren’t what I would go with so while I didn’t like those the fights STILL managed to be fun to watch. The lack of a big budget clearly shows through in quite a few scenes but even without it they are able to put together a solid film. While the film was entertaining if you give these guys a real budget and some actors with more experience I could see them putting together something truly amazing.
Oh and any movie where Lloyd Kaufman makes a guest appearance as himself can’t be bad. Right?
