I watched this low-budget SOV zombie flick based solely on the strength of Katherine Isabelle, one of my favourite contemporary scream queens, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed the film as a whole. Although the plot certainly isn't anything special—a group of forensic students on a field exam find themselves not just examining the dead, but fighting for their lives against them—the lively execution and impressive old-school gore effects, coupled with Isabelle's appeal, ensured that I was thoroughly entertained from start to finish.Considering his obvious budgetary constraints, director Lowell Dean (who would go on to make the equally fun WolfCop) has delivered a stylish looking film that makes the most of its grim, isolated locale, whilst serving up a fair amount of gore-tastic zombie mayhem, with a couple of blood drenched scenes to rival those of much bigger productions: Isabelle's fight against a pair of her undead friends in a cabin is a marvel of practical splatter effects, the poor girl impaling one zombie through the face with a chair leg, and hacking at another's throat until his head falls backwards.After much chopping and slashing, and quite a bit of gut munching (entrails are graphically yanked from the victims' bodies—something sorely missing from many a modern zombie film), Dean wraps up his film with an well-mounted sequence in which his remaining characters attempt to escape in a bus, allowing for some impressive vehicular stunts, and a fun cliffhanger ending.

This is one of the most powerful horror films of the last decade. Gifted director Lowell Dean has brought a creative vision to this work that's electric in its intensity. With an inspired screenplay by Christian Piers Betley, it is an original, fresh look at a genre which too often utilizes zombie like creatures simply due to lack of ideas. In this thrilling film, the threat of being slaughtered by flesh craving monsters is given new energy and becomes something entirely different than anything before. The suspense and terror are incredible and at times overwhelming. Unrelenting in its horror, this is a motion picture meant for audiences tolerant of graphic, stomach churning imagery. Some of the scenes are unholy in their nature and are undeniably haunting. Director Dean is certainly a talent to be reckoned with and a creative force bound to for cinematic greatness.

Aided by legendary filmmaker Roger Christian (one of nearly a dozen producers or exec-producers assigned to this film), newbie director Lowell Dean has made a fairly good Canadian rage virus thriller out of this film. The title comes from a rural state penitentiary that used to house life-term inmates who were then experimented upon. Cut a few decades ahead to the present and it's the site of a field examination for six forensic undergraduate students, assembled to study prepares cadavers on the property to graduate the class and gain a coveted FBI position. With a dozen cadavers placed around the site for the three teams of two students each to investigate seems fine enough, until a few additional cadavers, dressed all in inmate orange, turn up – and then get up and attack with extreme prejudice – when all hell breaks loose. The cast, including such Canadian horror regulars as American MARY's Katherine Isabel and her fellow GINGER SNAPS 2 & 3 co-star Brendan Fletcher, does an excellent job, lending credibility to the characters and fluency to the story action. Makeup effects are pretty good and there's a workable score by Igor Vabrac and Ken Worth (the latter noted for Canadian TV series like GHOST TRACKERS and John Woo's ONCE A THIEF). Director Dean, mentored to one extent or another by Christian (see DVD Extras for some details on that) has a good sense of camera placement and movement and along with his cast gives the otherwise routine rage zombie story a satisfying value-added visual dimension.

Arriving at a remote campsite for a class project, forensics students learn the area was a ground for dumping toxic waste years ago when the patients of a prison experiment found there revive and vicious attack them, forcing them to get out alive.This turned out to be quite an enjoyable and entertaining zombie effort with a lot to like about it. One of the better features is the zombies themselves, which starts off nicely with their introduction as another supposed part of their field trip only for a nasty surprise to await them, also manages to work rather well with them within the film itself. Deformed beyond belief with some rather nasty looking wounds, exposed veins, charred skin and a decomposed look that comes off really well and is truly frightening at times, especially with the way their actions are involved. Managing to incorporate the more ravenous side of their behavior makes for a rather imposing villain here as they relentlessly charge after their victims and don't seem interested in anything other than devouring their prey which makes them formidable enemies in here. As well, this provides the film with plenty of fantastic gore scenes throughout as they initially strike against the group before getting the tables turned, so there's plenty to like from the first attacks out on the lake or in the tangled, twisting cluster of tree-branches that really signals where the film hits its stride in terms of attacks. Surprisingly, this also affords the movie numerous amounts of high-end action scenes as the sleeping shack encounter, command-center ambush and the extended, thrilling high-way escape on the prison bus are all extremely fun and exciting action sequences that are just immensely entertaining and pack more of a punch than expected considering the low-budget that rears it's head from time-to-time. There's a quality running throughout this that really does betray the low-budget roots of this that really sticks out quite noticeably on the devoured bodies that doesn't quite match the rest of the movie and somewhat gives away the film's sources. As well, the opening assignment and getting them out to the area is itself quite dull with the endless time actually setting up the procedures to be conducted rather than having been done beforehand as well as being forced to spend time with the bitter, resentful head of the project who wears thin quite early in the film. Otherwise, there's not a lot wrong with this one.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.