Review of The Rezort (2015) by Joe S — 20 Jan 2017

This movie has an audience: If you read World War Z, the Zombie Survival Guide, and the other related real world zombie scenario books from the early 2010's, you will be very pleasantly surprised.

The story takes places after the rebuilding period that followed a Level 3 Outbreak which wiped out around 2 billion humans. The rules are as follows:

-The virus is transferred via saliva.

-The older the zombie, the slower they get.

-Destroy the nervous system or incinerate the whole body.

-Some zombies have detached memories/primitive cognition.

These rules were never broken!

The acting was good enough. The main character was well played, and the emotional/psychological struggles are realistic for a WWZ survivor. Her romantic interest was a "soldier" that fought during the war (I got the feeling that most people called soldiers were the initial outbreak survivors who formed militias to fight back, mixed with volunteers to the front line, not so much actual trained military), and who falls more and more back into the person he was during the war. There is also plenty of zombie fodder that die some pleasantly predictable deaths.

The budget shows, with well made zombies, location, set, camera quality, and good writing by people who are obviously huge fans of the zombie genre.

If you want to see a work of art, look elsewhere, this isn't trying to be art. If you want to see a well thought out and executed zombie movie that will keep you too interested to multi-task (i.e. surf the internet or play game apps) this is it. I'm actually going to buy a physical copy of this movie and will be adding it to my small collection.

SPOILERS (Seriously critics, use common courtesy with spoiler warnings.).

The security of the Rezort is compromised by some radical activist plugging in a usb thinking she is downloading a data dump for an organization that wants human rights applied to the zombies. She was catfished though, and the usb also uploaded a few files that broke down the security. The files were found, but lazy IT employees who are also fearful of their boss decide to ignore it until after this tour group is done. It all goes south and the movie happens. Ultimately it is discovered that the rezort is maintaining their supply of zombies (that supposedly all originate from the war) by infecting refugees, and then progressing their deterioration with long term heat exposure in an oven. This actually would work in a WWZ/Zombie SG universe, as deterioration of the muscles is ultimately what will wipe out the zombies in even a doomsday scenario.

My theory on the organization responsible for the security breach is that a state or a coalition of state actors were pissed off at this billionaire for keeping the threat of a second war alive, and so set into motion the series of events necessary to carpet bomb the island. This is supported indirectly by news reports flashed during the opening, in which a military spokesperson is discussing how an outbreak would be handled.

I really enjoy that idea, but this very tightly written story has two holes at the very end because of it.

1) They carpet bomb the island, but no where even close to the extent that is obviously necessary. Nothing short of dropping a nuke makes sense, as there are caves and deep structures that aren't guaranteed to be hit, let alone destroyed enough to incinerate the hordes.

2) The main character is running to jump off the cliff in a last ditch effort to escape the hordes, and then the carpet bombing starts, and the bombs are dropping close enough to at the very least knock her off her feet, but actually kill her through a combination of percussion shock and heat. But whatever, it's a movie, many higher grade movies that qualify as art have much bigger holes than this.

As a result of hole #1, there is a second outbreak (Level 2) and the supposed beginning of a another war. But what really excited me is that the outbreak is straight out of the Zombie SG! Swimming takes motor skills that zombies lack, but they don't need to breath, so they walked across the bottom of the ocean and come up out of the beach! This took a few weeks, as they are even slower in water.

All in all, the most faithful zombie movie I've ever seen.