Dead Zone takes place sometime in the future when a deadly virus has infected people and turned them into zombies. To deal with the issue, the government has bombed areas with infected people with radiation, turning the areas into "dead zones." Turns out, in one of those dead zones, a CDC prototype of a cure is waiting in a lab for someone to grab so they can mass-produce it and save the planet. As always, these kinds of missions fall to a special forces team, this time Master Chief Jeff Fahey assigns this mission to a team led by White. When they get to the dead zone, finding the prototype cure is easy, but getting out proves tough, especially when some mysterious being starts picking off White's team. What is this thing? And how can it be stopped?
This film is a definite case for why shorter is better, because overall it wasn't the best deal, but only asking for 82 minutes of my time made it much more palatable. The biggest issue for me was this construct where the radiation poisoning in the dead zone meant everyone had to wear masks and suits that made them indistinguishable from one another, which made it hard for me to figure out who was doing what. Not only that, but to show our characters' faces, they used this Iron Man style view of them from inside the mask. So it was like "who did that last action?" Then cut to character grimacing inside Iron Man-like mask to tell us. I did like the unique element they added to the standard virus makes everyone zombies paradigm with the super-human monster. Not only did it give us something more, but with White being so imposing, a super-human baddie makes it more believable that he would struggle defeating it. Beyond all that, it is fairly low-budget, doesn't give us much new for the genre, and as I mentioned was hard to follow at times; but that shorter runtime with White in the lead was enough to make this not a difficult sit. Is "not a difficult sit" a recommendation?
We're now at 22 films for Michael Jai White, our film's one Hall of Famer. Definitely 30 Club is a goal for him, and Tubi has some others beyond this that we could do, so we don't have any excuse to not get him close this year. He's someone who should probably get at least 4 films a year reviewed on our site, but this is only his third since last year at this time, so that's a problem. The issue with him here is that the construct of him being in the mask the whole time limits a bit how much we get him, as we have to take it on faith that that guy in a suit and mask that just kicked someone was him because we saw his face in the Iron Man-style screen a second later; by the same token, his character is in the film throughout, which is good. I think that's unfortunately part of the reason why he doesn't get as many reviews, he's not quite at the Dolph level where it doesn't matter what the movie is, we'll review it, so if I see something like this that doesn't look promising, and I know I'm only watching it to get more of White's movies on the site, I tend to push it down the queue. That or I miss out on it when it's available to stream, like his Never Back Down sequel that seems to pop in and out of free streamers. The reality as I'm watching this is that he should be getting better roles, like more Blood and Bone kinds of things that really show everyone what he can do, and are so exciting I can't push them down in my queue. He is in a new Dolph movie coming out in a couple months, so at least that's one we know we'll be reviewing.
We also get a scant amount of Jeff Fahey, a Fahey amuse-bouche if you will. He does concerned with a goatee really well, as evidenced by the screen grab. He also does slick military jargon while explaining a mission well too. He's had his moment of fame on the hood of a speeding car in a 90s PM flick, so I guess we can't blame him for the Trader Joe's free sample of a role he had here: "do you want to try some of these dried apples?" "No, I just need to find the cheese, but thank you." To be honest, with the 82-minute runtime, I don't know that I needed more Fahey than that. And perhaps the line at Trader Joe's is the best comp for a movie like this with that runtime. You get there and see the line is extending all the way to the produce section, and it's like "okay Matt, hunker down, you'll be here a while," but before you know it, with all the staff they have running the checkout, and the system they use where they funnel everyone in then disperse them, you're playing on your phone while someone is yelling "sir? Sir!" and you realize it's your turn to check out. Here I was like "hunker down for this standard zombie movie," and the next thing I knew I was at the hour mark and only had 20 minutes left. With a short runtime you can get away with a lot more, even some scant Jeff Fahey amuse-bouche-ery.
I completely forgot that I had a "zombies" tag, so I used it here, but when I clicked on it, the last time it was used was for Dolph's Battle of the Damned. That was in 2020, and I feel like due to the proliferation of zombie films that I must've reviewed something else that was zombie since then, but how would I know? The zombie movie feels like a lazy construct when it's not Romero or something new being done with it, and to be honest, I don't know if this movie does anything that different with it. It's low-hanging low-budget film fruit: find a small, deserted location--in this case Grand Junction, Colorado, which I've been to and can attest to it's remoteness--put some people in that zombie situation, and then load up on the extras--or if you need to save money, use the crew. Slap a couple names on the tin, and you're good to go. Beyond the runtime though, what does set this one apart is how much Michael Jai White we get. Granted, a lot of it is the Iron Man screen, but his character is in it throughout. That with the runtime mitigates the usual "oh geez, another zombie movie," eye roll a film like this may evoke, but you can also understand why people would avoid it for that--or put it off like I did. We want to say "studios should come up with more ideas," but is the zombie construct in the low-budget movie any worse than the one-name title origin movie construct from the major studios? They're both bad and they both hurt, but at least here we had a few elements mitigating the damage.
Finally, any current movie with a virus cure or vaccine construct will inevitably draw parallels to COVID. While I don't think they were using it as a metaphor, I do think we can look at the ways this movie uses the cure/vaccine that may explain why people don't get how vaccines work. Like most films, here the cure/vaccine is a MacGuffin and a Magic Shot that almost immediately makes someone who was bitten by one of our zombies better. We know when we take amoxicillin when we have an infection that one dose doesn't immediately make us better, but in the movies you don't have the luxury of multiple days to take a prescription, so whatever the miracle prototype is, it needs to work immediately. Also, this doesn't know if it wants to be a vaccine or a cure, because someone can take it after they've been bitten. If I didn't get the flu vaccine and then I catch the flu, I can't go to Rite Aid and ask for the vaccine and expect to be better immediately. The vaccine is taken before I get the flu to either prevent me from catching it altogether, or at least prevent serious illness. I think most people understand that movies aren't real, but considering how some of the misunderstanding around how vaccines work squares with the way movies use them, not to mention a large enough portion of our population thinks JFK, Jr. isn't really dead, and that a football player who had a cardiac event after he was hit in the chest is actually dead and the person we're seeing now is a body double, you never know. Either way, while I think any film coming out now that has a virus/vaccine element will feel metaphorical, I don't think that's what was going on here, I think they just wanted a MacGuffin and a Magic Bullet, and with a virus turning people into zombies, the vaccine/cure is the natural go to--and if it was meant to be a metaphor, it came off kind of clunky. Something that used to be such a simple plot device is now much more complicated in our modern world.
And with that, let's wrap this up. Currently you can get this on Tubi here in the US, as it is a Tubi original. I know that "it's not a difficult sit" isn't the most glowing review, but for what is pretty well-worn territory, giving us some solid enough Michael Jai White, and getting us in and out in 82 minutes, it's not a bad sit.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18396866
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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