I really wasn’t feeling this one. Apocalypse Z had been sitting in my watch list for quite some time, so I decided to tackle it. I’m really hyped to watch the new Korean zombie thriller, Colony, so I thought this could be a quick warmup. I probably can’t be the only one, but I initially assumed this movie was based on a video game. I looked it up, and the game I was thinking of was Days Gone, so no, I was wrong. I think it’s because I remembered seeing a protagonist riding a bike while being chased by huge hordes of zombies.

There’s really not much to talk about in this one. We’re first introduced to a couple, an incident happens, and fast forward to a year later, we learn of an outbreak that’s happening and, of course, all hell eventually breaks loose, with our protagonist having to decide whether to take his chances staying in place with his cat or evacuating with the military. There’s not really anything inherently wrong with what they tried to do with this movie, as they pretty much followed the same recipe and formula as so many others. Manel is a good Samaritan caught in a world gone crazy.

I think where the movie really started to trend downward was in the second half, when Manel is rescued by a bunch of shady men on a trawler. This arc was just flat and really took away from the “zombie” element of the movie, which I’m sure is what drew audience members in the first place. I get it, though—when society collapses, people are gonna do what people are gonna do, and we are our own worst enemy. Sure. But it’s just not that fun to watch play out here. I had expected more thrilling zombie chases and sequences, but there were very few to be had. I actually laughed a bit at the end when Manel and friends, in the escape helicopter, discover that even the Canary Islands—where Manel is so desperate to go to reunite with his sister—is not safe, via a chilling recorded message from her. We see two fighter jets zoom past their helicopter; I would have assumed in a situation like that, they would have been blasted out of the sky by the military. But of course it’s just a movie, and at that point I was just glad the movie finally ended. I’m hoping the next one will get better.