Though there is no such thing as karma in real life, there is plenty of it in the movies. In a typical movie, the good are rewarded and the evil punished, each to the extent that they deserve. In some cases, however, movie karma goes a little overboard, and people are punished way in excess of what little faults they may have, and that is what we have in this film.When the movie starts, a couple is having dinner, with the husband, Sam Sherman, saying grace. He makes a semi-blasphemous remark about how God let their baby die. Uh oh. Sure enough, he must be punished, and instrument of death is his own wife, Sally. She goes all zombie on him and kills him with a fork. Zombies don't usually use weapons, however, so this is our first clue that this is not your typical zombie flick.Actually, just before the baby died, Sam and Sally were having an argument. He criticized her for not changing the diaper on the stinking baby, and she said it was his turn to do his part and change the diaper himself. So, maybe that's it. Sam is being punished for sexism, imagining that diaper changing is woman's work.But there's more. Sam had left his pistol on the table where the baby could get to it. As a result, while Sam and Sally are arguing, the baby puts the barrel in his mouth and pulls the trigger. And thus we have to wonder if Sam was punished for being negligent in leaving a handgun around where a baby could get to it.It turns out that the baby was adopted, and the baby's birth mother, Laura Childs, is being besieged by zombies, whom she manages to fight off or, in some cases, kill with the help of her boyfriend Jack or the sheriff. Her roommate gets killed, probably punishment for making a move on Jack. A sheriff's deputy is killed as punishment for being a jerk. And so on. When her own mother turns on her and is put in an insane asylum, she notices Sally Sherman, whom she knows to be the adoptive mother of her baby, is also a patient. Laura slips into her room, and Sally tells her that the baby's ghost is inhabiting people as a way of inflicting punishment on those who wronged him, and Laura is big on his list of those on whom he wants to inflict vengeance.You'd think Laura would get credit for having the baby and giving it up for adoption instead of aborting it the way her previous boyfriend wanted all along. Well, said previous boyfriend does get punished for that, right after the ghost baby inhabits the body of the woman he was bitch-banging and lets him have some axe in the face. But Laura still did her baby wrong by not keeping him, so he is still after her as his main target.Somewhere along the way, we find out that a fanatical Christian couple were the baby's first adoptive parents, and when Child Protective Services took the baby away, this first adoptive mother cursed it. Actually, the movie is thick with Christianity, and we regularly see crucifixes hanging on the walls of the rooms of different characters in the film. And thus it is that while ghost baby is going around wreaking death on those who wronged him, we sort of get the feeling that some of these people are being punished for excess of religion.Anyway, Laura's mother escapes from the insane asylum, and, finding Laura at home, tells her that the ghost baby just wants his mother. But then ghost baby inhabits Laura's mother again, and Laura has to handcuff her to the oven. Then Jack comes over, and he gets possessed by the ghost baby too.But now Laura knows what ghost baby really wants. She tells him to come to Mommy, lays him on the floor and has sex with him. So, spiritually speaking, she has sex with her own son, through the body of her boyfriend, resulting in impregnation. Talk about returning to the womb. Anyway, it does the job. Ghost baby is satisfied and he waits inside his mother to be reborn.It looks as though everything has ended happily, but I have to wonder what movie karma thinks about incest.

Laura is a waitress in a small town in Ohio. It's not bad enough that she's in a dead end job with no advancement prospects. One night a local man, a respected attorney, goes mad and attacks her.With the passage of time the attacks against Laura and her friends and family increase in frequency and intensity. Finally she learns the cause of these attacks: the child she gave up for adoption died in a tragic accident, and his vengeful spirit won't rest until his revenge is complete.OK. Awesome concept. Lots of promise. The Ohio locations are new to our eyes. So what went wrong?The script is, to be generous, untidy. And the direction simply cannot rise to the occasion. Scenes that should have been terrifying are simply puzzling. And the ending, with Laura pregnant and preparing to give birth again- presumably this time she'll keep the child, so he won't grow up to be a demon- is simply dumbfounding. Not profound, just profoundly dumb and anticlimactic.In a better world this screenplay would have fallen into the hands of a director like John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper who could reshape the story and bring coherence and a sense of menace. They could have used the same cast- I'm one of those nuts who thinks that with a strong strict an effective director can get a good performance out of almost anyone- and same locations. I'd be content seeing it remade on an equally small budget.The people behind the camera are far from untalented. Unfortunately, they simply bit off way more than they could chew. But I do commend them for making a workmanlike effort.

As I've stated in earlier reviews, all I look for in a low budget film is a good story line or at least writing that makes sense. I don't want to blame everything on the writer, since who know what happened behind the scenes, but you would think that at least over a 100 people read the script and could point out the errors.Here's the story line: An adopted baby dies by an accidental gunshot, and decides to take revenge on everyone in his quest to be reunited with his birth mother, by possessing the living and killing everyone that stands between him and his birth mother. Sound interesting? It was, until it went horribly awry.I have to commend real critics who are able to critique a movie without giving anything away ( Siskel and Ebert, I salute you), but I'm not yet at that level. So in order to properly express my thoughts, I have no choice but to reveal some spoilers.********************SPOILER ALERT BELOW******************************* The movie opens with a mother obviously possessed by something and murdering her husband (it's expressed previously that they had lost a young child). Next scene, a woman is attacked by someone else that also seems possessed, but the assailant is killed by the young woman's boyfriend. Boyfriend is held for questioning overnight (though she isn't). She gets attacked again in her home (after gratuitous nude scene), and the new assailant (again obviously possessed) is killed yet again by her recently released boyfriend. Cut to a scene in the police station that begins the nonsensical writing.The cop reveals that this is the third murder in connection with her. Laura, of course, raises an eyebrow and asks "third"? The cop then proceeds to tell her about the opening murder scene and says he did a background check on Laura and it turns out that the baby she gave up for adoption was the child of the mother from the opening scene. He found all this out with a phone call. Which would have been impossible for him to find out, as Laura's shocked response and non-recognition of the adoptive mother's name clearly points out. If the adoption had been an "open" one, she would have known who ultimately wound up with her baby (it is later revealed that the child was placed with foster parents first, who she also didn't know about. More on that later). In a "closed" adoption, the officer could have found out that Laura gave a child up for adoption, but he would never known to whom, as records in a closed adoption are sealed and can only be opened under extenuating circumstances, and even then that would be highly difficult. So there was no way he would be able to find out that information, let alone make a link to Laura.Laura, of course, starts investigating on her own, breaks into the adoption agency (which apparently doesn't have an alarm) and tracks down the original foster parents. A couple of religious fanatics that don't know who Laura is. Apparently Laura's child is taken away from them for being "too Christian", though exact reasons are never given. When the child is taken away from the foster mother, she curses him, which leads to the entire plot. But why curse the child? If the foster mother has this kind of power, why not curse the people who took the child away? Why not everyone who's against your religious convictions? It would have made more sense if she were a Satanist or something (to add to the supernatural element). Anyway, she also winds up getting killed.Moving on. Apparently this kid is really busy and possesses a lot of different people. Her own mother included (who was totally miscast. She was an incredibly beautiful woman who was obviously only a few years, if not the same age, as the lead and was probably hired on her looks). Now here's the rub: everyone who survives being possessed knows exactly who they were possessed by. This is incredibly evident when the original cop mentioned above was also possessed. After he attempts to kill Laura, he heads to the jail to release the boyfriend, saying he now realizes what's going on and he's not guilty. Ummm, if you now know what's going on, where's the reinforcements to protect Laura? I understand that you can't tell the rest of the police force what's going on (who would believe you), but you do nothing? If you have the ability to unseal adoption records with a single phone call, you can certainly try to do something to resolve the situation.Now here comes the sickest part of the movie, which, if the rest of the movie lived up to it's premise, this would have been brilliant. Laura figures out that the only thing that the spirit of her baby wants is to be reunited with it's birth mother (which is contradictory, since all it seemed it wanted to do was kill her throughout the entire film). Her boyfriend (who is not the original father) becomes possessed as well after being released from prison, and while attempting to kill her, Laura says something to the effect of "come to Mommy. Mommy loves you" which seems to calm him. What does she do next? Decide to have sex with her possessed boyfriend (thereby actually having sex with her son) in order to become pregnant again. Sick and incestuous and could've had a lot more impact if the rest of the film wasn't so poorly thought out.This movie had the potential to be a great little horror film, but turned out to be an example of when a great idea is poorly executed. I only wish that someone had the resolve to point out all the flaws in the script prior to filming. Still, it's worth a view if only to see what could've been.

Rise of the Dead is set in the small town of Dudley in Ohio where Laura Childs (Erin Wilk) works as a waitress, while walking home by herself one night Laura is attacked by respectable lawyer Sam Fulton (Jason Madera) but Laura's boyfriend Jack Walther (Stephen Seidel) manages to save her by running Sam over. Laura is shaken but not badly hurt although she has no idea why Sam would try to kill her, a question that local Sheriff Brown (Peter Blitzer) has the task of answering. Then soon after Laura's best friend & house-mate Amber (Jaime Whitlock) also tries to kill her without any sort of reason & again Jack comes to Laura's rescue & in a struggle Amber is stabbed & killed. Something definitely is going on, Laura discovers that a woman named Sally Sherman (Brooke Delaney) killed her husband & that they had both adopted Laura's baby & that the common link is Laura & her baby which she gave up. Laura becomes convinced that her baby has been possessing people in order to kill those responsible for it's misery & ultimate death...Directed by William Wedig this was originally filmed under the title Tantrum which was then changed to the more horror sounding Rise of the Dead when brought by the company that eventually released it, the title Rise of the Dead gives the impression that this will be some sort of apocalyptic zombie film in the vein of one of George A. Romero's efforts but Rise of the Dead is in fact much more low key than that & is more of a supernatural ghost story as much a flesh eating zombie film. To be fair to Rise of the Dead it only lasts 72 minutes (including opening & closing credits) so at least it's short, unfortunately that's pretty much where the positives end. The story is an audacious one, the dead spirit of a young child starts possessing people in order to kill those that let him down & led to his untimely death by handgun, for some strange reason Laura is the only person in the town of Dudley who can defend herself since no-one else the kid goes after puts up any sort of fight whatsoever & while I was sat there watching this I was wondering to myself why doesn't it just possess Laura & then make her commit suicide? There are no rules, the kid seems able to possess anyone whenever it wants for no apparent reason, no explanation is ever given & the ending has to be seen to be believed. In order to stop the kid no killing her while in her boyfriend Jack's body & therefore not having to kill him Laura seduces her kid & has sex with him which leads to a so-called twist ending where laura is seen to be pregnant, I didn't know whether to laugh or be repulsed to be honest. With such a short duration there's no time to flesh the story out & all of the character's really are very basic one dimensional nobodies that leave no impact, the story is nothing more than random incidents strung together & the lack of any zombie action will surely disappoint many.Obviously shot on an ultra low budget Rise of the Dead looks like it was, the video camcorder look, the drab colours, the lifeless cinematography & basic music. All the locations seem to be people's house's & the special effects are no more elaborate than a bit of fake blood splashed around. There are no special effects to speak of, no CGI or traditional effects work. There's no tension or atmosphere, the script never sets up any rules or limits & as such everything feels rather random.Apparently filmed in Ohio & Connecticut the production values are rock bottom. The acting isn't much better from a cast of unknown's, what else can I say?Rise of the Dead had the potential to be a decent supernatural possession revenge horror exploitation flick but isn't, it's bad in every aspect. Do yourself a favour & give this one a miss.