Lowell Dean directs this 2013 flat horror film which finds itself somewhere between average and so-so. 6 undergraduate forensic investigator CSI wannabe's (including Katherine "Ginger Snaps" Isabelle, Brendan Fehr, Brenda Fletcher) are out in the field (on a deserted island) learning from real life (but still staged) situations, their seemingly always angry professor/ coach/ mentor has set up 3 dead bodies which he sourced from a morgue and placed them in random situations for the students to investigate. Things go wrong when more bodies are found close by and soon enough zombies begin attacking the group who have to run and fight for survival. The zombies looked cheap, make up and effects were equally cheap, and I was angered at times by the lack of care taken in the delivery both in the horror element and the investigation element. I guess one saving grace is that instead of using CGI which would be easy the director and crew have stayed old-school and used prosthetics and fake blood. In regards to the CSI stuff - why is it that certain forensic investigation based films/TV shows show a blatant disregard for preserving the crime scene? The young investigators seem not to care about polluting the crime scene with their hair which is never tied back, they randomly touch corpses and areas around the corpses and they disregard what should be lesson 101 for them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not training in the art of crime scene investigation but evidently I know more than the director and cast who put this cliché filled film together. Character development is weak so you never real feel any emotional connection for the stars as they bumble around - for example why is Tomkins (Michael "Stargate SG1" Shanks) so angry all the time? Where did Nick "Lock Stock and Two smoking Barrels" Moran get his American accent from? This film feels like it could be a lot better but unfortunately comes across rushed and aesthetics over substance. 5/10 from me sorry, not the best horror or zombie flick, not the worst either but dull enough that I'll probably have forgotten it in a few days.

OK, so this is not totally totally bad and awful to get one as rating... But I also think that three would be too much...So, this gets two from me.This is a horror movie about zombies. Or some creatures that should be zombies but they are ... whatever. Whatever is the word to describe the 'costumes' and effects. Really not convincing. Not scary at all. It has some gruesome moments but they are poorly done.The acting is that of a high school drama meets wannabe horror actors. Very bad. No one is really convincing. And the girl which found her new best hobby - killing zombies and walking around with a gun is rather silly. The professor of those students is no comment. But I guess, it is worth watching only if you plan one day to film a horror movie to see what things ( and they are plenty!) not to do.Cheap effects of smoke are laughable. Michael Jackson Thriller's kinda bumping into houses throughout the floor is silly. Night haunting with surprising lights in the bus is funny. So many things are just awfully done.

I'm so used to B movies with bad plots, bad acting and bad makeup that I was blown away by this film. It's scary, tense and kept my attention. It's not perfect, it had some ridiculous elements that I think might have been meant to provide humor and the romantic element was not developed enough for how they played it. It fell flat in that regard, but they were just a few minutes here and there.If you like movies that have you tensing up, rooting for the actors and cringing at the gore, you'll like this film. The gore is plentiful, realistic and gross.The female lead character was resourceful, imaginative and ballsy. The actress (Katharine Isabelle)did a really good job and so did most of the others. Brendan Fehr, an actor I liked from his TV days was also excellent in portraying his character. Actually, all of the 'students' made a good showing, believable and I found myself rooting for them as the movie progressed.A zombie movie that kept my attention at least as much as World War Z and on what I expect was a much smaller budget.

13 Eerie (2013): The Good, the Bad and Recycled Zombies Synopsis: Six forensic science students go to an abandoned prison facility for field work. Little do they know that the facility was used to test hazardous chemicals on the death row inmates.The Good: It's always best when you don't expect much from a movie. I've had this one in my collection for a while, but always passed it by because nothing really stuck out about it. The concept didn't seem all that appealing, none of the actors or actresses are well known (which isn't a big deal in horror), cover art was pretty "meh"... I just felt like the movie was going to let me down. Having finally watched it, I'll say that I was moderately impressed. Now don't get me wrong, I rated it a 4 of 10, so that has more to do with lowered expectations than anything else, but still, there were some things to like about this movie. Aside from one or two actors, I thought this was a bright spot for the movie. Typically, you have to suffer through the acting and focus on plot and gore, but this group did a nice job with the dialogue given. Speaking of gore, the effects crew on this movie did a pretty darn good job. The budget was $3MM CAD, which is higher than I expected, but I still felt there was the appropriate amount of gore for a zombie film and it was well done. None of that cheesy CGI gore either. Good old fashioned practical effects and there wasn't any skimping on the kill shots. This is a very watchable film, it just suffers from not being much different from a million others. Which takes us to the bad....The Bad: While it wasn't really boring or a waste of time, there really wasn't anything to set it apart from other same-genre comparisons. We've seen it before and we've seen it done better. Even though toxic waste is the catalyst to the carnage, this is simply another zombie movie. Are there subtle differences? Sure. But at it's core, it's just another addition to the mind-numbing obsession with the zombie genre as of late. Honestly, it's hard to find any good zombie movies anymore because they are being churned out faster than we can digest them and the cookie-cutter mold is getting super stale. Maybe that's why I wasn't as hard on this film as I could be, because it was certainly watchable, low-budget horror. Those things are almost mutually exclusive in this day and age. Still, I am almost inclined to say "Nothing to see here, people. Move along." The Recycled Zombies: One of my pet peeves is recycling something in a movie because of cheapness. It is just so distracting. I get that you only have so much money and sometimes you have to make due. On this movie, I was able to look past the set location, which is quite minimal and all within a very condensed location. It all kind of looks the same. They are either in the bus, in the woods or in one of a few shacks that all look the same. I can look past that. What was very hard to look past is the fact that I think they were recycling the zombies. I'm sure it was tough to get all the make-up effects looking great... and they did look pretty great, but when one of them dies, the next one that comes around looks strangely familiar. Maybe the ripped prison garb is slightly ripped in a different spot or the zombie is shirtless this time or whatever, but by the time they show up for the sixth or seventh time, you start to get wise to the charade. I feel cheapened as a viewer. Like, "Did you really think I wasn't going to notice that this is the same zombie that you just killed ten minutes ago?" There's not a worse crime as a director than taking your audience for a bunch of blind morons. I suppose there is a chance that I AM a blind moron and the zombies were just really similar, but I think I'll listen to my gut on this one.