Ouch! Me last week: "No, Stallone, you're not going to con me into watching the direct-to-disc cheapie Escape Plan 3. I have more respect for myself now." Me yesterday after getting a coupon code from Redbox: "Hey, let me see what this new Dolph Lundgren zombie movie is all about..." Yes, I'm dumb as I spent 50 cents on Dead Trigger and still feel ripped off. Five video game players are selected by a government agency to train to be zombie killers after a worldwide outbreak. Their handlers are two grunts (Dolph and Isaiah Washington) and after one training montage they are dropped into zombie-infested Terminal City to save a scientist with some serum. It would be hard to screw up Dolph vs. zombies, yet this film shows you how to do it. Now I'm not up to date on all my direct-to-video Dolph, but this has to be his worst film in years. An adaptation of a first person shooter zombie video game, Dead Trigger apparently saw the game company (and main financier) split early into production and it shows. The end credits have two "Directed by..." credits back-to-back. From the "corporate training video" style to the terrible CGI blood and lousy acting, it is awful in every facet. There is also a twist at the end that is so poorly handled (SPOILER: The whole mission was just a video game the 5 kids were playing. That could be cool since Dolph's character looks like a caricature, but it is covered with a voice over by the lead kid stating a real zombie outbreak happened two weeks later and they were called into service like in the game. What!?). Perhaps the most surprising thing about this is that Dolph is in the entire film (Washington has the good sense to dip out at the 30 minute mark). The box art and menu list this just as Dead Trigger, but the actual movie calls it Dead Trigger: Unkilled. To quote Jack Burton, I don't even know what the hell that means!?
Review of Dead Trigger
