The dead has risen to walk the earth, and they brought that flesh loving appetite with them. Akron, Ohio is under siege when the undead begins to attack. Several years haved passed, and it appears they may have spread throughout the world. The government creates a team of soldiers called the "Zombie Squad" to deal with the hordes of zombies. After capturing several zombies to be used as test subjects, the scientist have come to believe that a cure can be created. Now the Zombie Squad must venture into Akron to obtain the possible cure.-summary
I'm a huge sucker for zombie films. I love watching zombies chew on live meat. I just can't put my joy into words, when the undead are satisfying their appetite with arms and guts. I'm also a sucker for cool cover art. It gets me almost every time. Unfortunately, once again, this was another one of those times I should have acknowledged one of my own personal rules. "If it looks good, chances are it's not."
When coming into low budget flicks, I'm more than willing to let certain movie making elements slide. Normally, these type of films will have poor production values, but there would be a story screaming to be heard. 1988's The Dead Next Door is such a movie. The movie appears to have great ideas and it could have been so much more. However, there are a few things holding it back, and the acting happens to be the main culprit. I mean seriously, to call the acting terrible would be disrespectful to every terrible actor in existence. Good grief, it's just well... atrocious, and there isn't one actors name worth mentioning. I learned a couple of things after researching the movie. One is that Bruce Campbell dubbed a few voices for the characters. I seriously didn't notice that. Perhaps, it's because I'm not a Bruce fan, but I won't re-watch this again to try and catch it.
The acting isn't even laughably bad to me, it's so damn awful that my enjoyment was dramatically decreased. I just may watch this again drunk some day to try and get a laugh. Now for the second thing I also learned. Supposedly, the actors weren't even paid to do this movie. They actually worked for free, and it damn sure shows. A person just knows they're watching bargain bin theater skills, when the best actors in the whole flick from start to finish are the zombies. I've seen much better in WWE. No, I'm not kidding here.
Director and writer J.R. Bookwalter did appear to have some type of talent here, because I felt the story was pretty strong in painting people as monsters as well. Bookwalter decided to go the route of using one of man's greatest weaknesses, or assets as the spot monkey. In this particular case, he picked people's fanatical beliefs in religion. There happens to be a religious cult ran be a maniacal zealot who believes helping the zombies is actually contributing to God's work, in his attempt to make humanity pay for their sins.
The Dead Next Door also shines in the area were it should, and that's in the gore. The little bit that you do see just may be something to remember, due to the sheer grossness in the bites. I have to mention that the movie has a very good opening scene. Chaos runs rampant, as the zombies begin their attack in full force, the town is engulfed by total mayhem. However, I would have preferred less off screen killing though. The shootouts really weren't much and they failed to entertain me in the slightest. I did enjoy the appearances for most of the zombies. The make up was very good in my view, with some disgusting close ups at times.
I found the movie to be lacking in atmosphere, this was definitely because of the subpar BGM. The music didn't enhance the feel of the movie at all to me. Although the story had its interesting moments. I feel there were unnecessary elements thrown out there for no real reason, and the fact almost none of these things were explained even in the slightest only comes off as sloppy direction.
The Dead Next Door to me is a bad movie. The only crowd I can possibly imagine getting some type of enjoyment out of this would be the gore crowd. I'm not sure but I've been told it was also a zombie comedy, with the exception of one scene, I can't recall much of anything about it being funny. But hey, that's just me I guess. Anyway, I highly recommend it to die hard zombie fans. The movie has an 84 minute run time.
Pros:
-Decent gore scenes, interesting ideas, the cover art
Cons:
-Porno flick level acting, unnecessary story elements
