The zombie genre’s recent surge in popularity has yielded some great films from all areas of the film industry. Of course, the flip side to this is some utter tripe being brought into existence. Dead Men Walking, despite its clever can’t-believe-they’ve never-done-that-before title, falls firmly into the utter tripe category.

A side-effect of the glut of zombie flicks on offer these days is that most audiences have become pretty de-sensitised to the sight of the dead wandering around and attacking the living. It has been done so many times now that there is zero justification for doing it again, even if it is in a neat new setting like a maximum security prison. No, a zombie film needs more than zombies to be of any real interest, it needs characters and story. Look at Romero’s celebrated Dead series, the films are about people dealing with a horrific situation and the different ways they do that, the characters are easy to empathise with and so their plight is more important to the viewer. This film, on the other hand is chock full of personality free zombies-in-waiting and clichéd characters, the crook with a heart of gold for example or the hard-ass prison warden. The story consists of nothing more than the living characters trying to avoid being eaten by the dead ones. There is no interest built up in anything about these people or the situation they are in and as a result the film becomes little more than a series of gory zombie attacks.

The gore is actually quite well handled and a good thing too as there is plenty of it. The trouble is that it quickly becomes repetitive and dull. The mandatory zombies pulling the intestines out of a living human scene is used several times and by the fourth time around it has lost any shock value it once had. The same can be said for the gunshot effects, there is only so many times you can watch someone’s brains shoot out the back of their head onto the wall in exactly the same manner and still be affected. It is a vivid example of the law of diminishing returns in action.

The intestines scene isn’t the only thing stolen from other better movies here, there are many nods (though that’s probably too generous a word for what is more like outright theft) to lots of superior films throughout. The ending in particular is a lame and pointless re-hash of Night of the Living Dead’s climax which here packs about as much emotional impact as an episode of Neighbours.

The saddest thing about Dead Men Walking is that it could have been good, the prison setting is good, the production values are higher than most movies of this sort of budget and there were clearly some talented people working behind the scenes on the special effects. The script and direction however conspire to make what should have been a taut and lean zombie shocker into a lethargic snooze-athon devoid of anything resembling interest or excitement.

Rating: 5/10

Review By Matt Compton