I'm going to be totally honest here; I had a lot of high expectations before watching this movie.
Joel Schumacher (Lost Boys, Flatliners, St. Elmo's Fire, A Time to Kill, and countless other movies) directing a movie about Nazi Zombies? I could barely wait for work to end to get home and dive in!
No spoiler alerts here, but I should set the record straight on what to expect if you want to watch this movie. First, IMHO it can only be loosely called a "Zombie movie" because really there aren't your typical Zombies in the plot. There are no lumbering undead zombies like in "Walking Dead", and no rage-infected fast-movers like "28 Days". They are basically re-animated corpses that do the bad guys bidding. Although I have to admit re-animated dobermans and horses are pretty damn scary! Also, if you are looking for a hoard of SS-uniformed Zombies (aka "Dead Snow") this is not your movie. There's one Nazi, he's not really a Zombie, but he is a bad-ass.
Michael Fassbender from "Inglorious Basterds" plays the villian brilliantly and shows that his genius in his Basterds role was not a fluke or one-hit-wonder. The rest of the acting is pretty good and is definitely a cut-above when compared to your average Zombie flick. Dominic Purcell and Henry Cavill are convincing as a pair of brothers who go on a mission to wreak revenge on a monster due to Purcell's capture years ago after coming back from the Iraq War, and Emma Booth perfectly cast as the young woman whose family ends up caught in the crossfire due to their own sins.
The ending was a little predictable and left things a little open for a sequal, although since this one went straight to DVD a sequal is somewhat doubtful. And in the beginning I felt like I was watching two different movies until the plot came together about 20 minutes in. But overall I thought it was well-done and definitely action-packed, keeping me on the edge of my seat for most of the second half of the movie. At 90 minutes its just short enough that you feel wanting a little more but also happy that it didn't have too many slow-moving plot issues.
My verdict? On a "Zombie Movie Scale of 1-10" I'd give this one a 6.
Slightly better than average and entertaining. I didn't come away feeling like I wanted 90 minutes back of my life that I wasted, and the different take on the genre was interesting.
WATCH IT IF: re-animated dobermans and horses, a hundred year old Nazi bad-ass, and a fast-moving plot are your things.
DON'T WATCH IT IF: you expect more than one Nazi, slow moving flesh eaters and a typical Zombie movie plot.
Blood Creek is currently available on NetFlix and more info can be found on IMDB here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450336/
Next week: The post-civil war era zombie flick "Exit Humanity".
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