disinterested_spectator Though there is no such thing as karma in real life, there is plenty of it in the movies. In a typical movie, the good are rewarded and the evil punished, each to the extent that they deserve. In some cases, however, movie karma goes a little overboard, and people are punished way in excess of what little faults they may have, and that is what we have in this film.When the movie starts, a couple is having dinner, with the husband, Sam Sherman, saying grace. He makes a semi-blasphemous remark about how God let their baby die. Uh oh. Sure enough, he must be punished, and instrument of death is his own wife, Sally. She goes all zombie on him and kills him with a fork. Zombies don't usually use weapons, however, so this is our first clue that this is not your typical zombie flick.Actually, just before the baby died, Sam and Sally were having an argument. He criticized her for not changing the diaper on the stinking baby, and she said it was his turn to do his part and change the diaper himself. So, maybe that's it. Sam is being punished for sexism, imagining that diaper changing is woman's work.But there's more. Sam had left his pistol on the table where the baby could get to it. As a result, while Sam and Sally are arguing, the baby puts the barrel in his mouth and pulls the trigger. And thus we have to wonder if Sam was punished for being negligent in leaving a handgun around where a baby could get to it.It turns out that the baby was adopted, and the baby's birth mother, Laura Childs, is being besieged by zombies, whom she manages to fight off or, in some cases, kill with the help of her boyfriend Jack or the sheriff. Her roommate gets killed, probably punishment for making a move on Jack. A sheriff's deputy is killed as punishment for being a jerk. And so on. When her own mother turns on her and is put in an insane asylum, she notices Sally Sherman, whom she knows to be the adoptive mother of her baby, is also a patient. Laura slips into her room, and Sally tells her that the baby's ghost is inhabiting people as a way of inflicting punishment on those who wronged him, and Laura is big on his list of those on whom he wants to inflict vengeance.You'd think Laura would get credit for having the baby and giving it up for adoption instead of aborting it the way her previous boyfriend wanted all along. Well, said previous boyfriend does get punished for that, right after the ghost baby inhabits the body of the woman he was bitch-banging and lets him have some axe in the face. But Laura still did her baby wrong by not keeping him, so he is still after her as his main target.Somewhere along the way, we find out that a fanatical Christian couple were the baby's first adoptive parents, and when Child Protective Services took the baby away, this first adoptive mother cursed it. Actually, the movie is thick with Christianity, and we regularly see crucifixes hanging on the walls of the rooms of different characters in the film. And thus it is that while ghost baby is going around wreaking death on those who wronged him, we sort of get the feeling that some of these people are being punished for excess of religion.Anyway, Laura's mother escapes from the insane asylum, and, finding Laura at home, tells her that the ghost baby just wants his mother. But then ghost baby inhabits Laura's mother again, and Laura has to handcuff her to the oven. Then Jack comes over, and he gets possessed by the ghost baby too.But now Laura knows what ghost baby really wants. She tells him to come to Mommy, lays him on the floor and has sex with him. So, spiritually speaking, she has sex with her own son, through the body of her boyfriend, resulting in impregnation. Talk about returning to the womb. Anyway, it does the job. Ghost baby is satisfied and he waits inside his mother to be reborn.It looks as though everything has ended happily, but I have to wonder what movie karma thinks about incest.

bababear Laura is a waitress in a small town in Ohio. It's not bad enough that she's in a dead end job with no advancement prospects. One night a local man, a respected attorney, goes mad and attacks her.With the passage of time the attacks against Laura and her friends and family increase in frequency and intensity. Finally she learns the cause of these attacks: the child she gave up for adoption died in a tragic accident, and his vengeful spirit won't rest until his revenge is complete.OK. Awesome concept. Lots of promise. The Ohio locations are new to our eyes. So what went wrong?The script is, to be generous, untidy. And the direction simply cannot rise to the occasion. Scenes that should have been terrifying are simply puzzling. And the ending, with Laura pregnant and preparing to give birth again- presumably this time she'll keep the child, so he won't grow up to be a demon- is simply dumbfounding. Not profound, just profoundly dumb and anticlimactic.In a better world this screenplay would have fallen into the hands of a director like John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper who could reshape the story and bring coherence and a sense of menace. They could have used the same cast- I'm one of those nuts who thinks that with a strong strict an effective director can get a good performance out of almost anyone- and same locations. I'd be content seeing it remade on an equally small budget.The people behind the camera are far from untalented. Unfortunately, they simply bit off way more than they could chew. But I do commend them for making a workmanlike effort.

MBunge Firstly, this is NOT a zombie movie. It's not a movie about zombies. There are no zombies in this movie. I rented this thing because of a DVD cover that made me think it was a zombie flick. I was terribly deceived.Secondly, remember the most awful zombie film you've ever seen. Rise of the Dead is even worse than that. I know that's an amazing thing to claim because the living dead genre has probably got the worst quality-to-crap ratio in all of cinema. The truly great zombie movies can be counted on the fingers of one hand and you can number the good ones before running out of toes. That leaves a legion or two of zombie films that range from mediocre to "I can't believe I'm watching this garbage". Rise of the Dead outstinks them all.Thirdly, pretend that Rob Zombie had a brother who was an even less talented filmmaker. I know it's difficult to conceive of anyone THAT inept and horrid, especially if you've seen House of 1000 Corpses or Zombie's version of Halloween II, but bear with me. Now imagine Zombie's colossally clueless bro making a movie about teen pregnancy where the moral of the story isn't preaching abstinence or sexual responsibility, it's that babies are literally life-destroying monsters and the women who love them are crazy bitches. Essentially, Rise of the Dead is the world's worst Afterschool Special on the virtues and advantages of abortion.The story, and I use the word "story" loosely, concerns a young woman named Laura (Erin Welk). Everywhere Laura goes, people start drooling and trying to kill her. Well, this one guy who chases her down the street appears to be auditioning for the new season of "So You Think You Can Dance?", but he may have been trying to Electric Boogaloo her to death.After hearing a lot of bad dialog from a lot of bad actors on a lot of bad sets, we find out that the people trying to kill Laura are all connected to the baby boy she gave up for adoption as a teenager and that the only way for Laura to save herself is to indulge in some spiritual incest. I'm not going to explain what any of that means in any further detail because I already lost enough brain cells watching Rise of the Dead the first time. If I dwell on it any longer I'm afraid I'll lose the ability to clothe and feed myself.This is yet another film made by people with no talent and very little money only because modern technology allows people with no talent and very little money to make movies. Rise of the Dead does have a couple of reasonably cute chicks who get naked and its atrociousness does reach the level of unintentional comedy a few times in its short, 72 minute run time. Those minuscule positives don't change the fact that this thing should never have been made and should never, ever, ever be watched.

Horrorible_Horror_Films For a crappy low budget movie, not bad. But it's still a crappy low budget movie. I appreciated the plot and story. This movie actually had one, most horror movies of this type usually barely even try. I also was actually impressed with the special effects, for the budget, they did a good job, didn't look stupid.This movie also had those two low-budget horror movie mainstays: Gore and tits! I liked the blood and guts gore, and I also liked the nudity. That is basically the whole point of any horror movie anyway. That is basically the whole point of any horror movie anyway. That is basically the whole point of any horror movie anyway.