[yasr_overall_rating]
A sheriff must rescue an estranged family from a mountain during a volcano eruption and fight off a horde of lava-filled zombies brought to life by a curse.
As the movie begins, three young Native American Indian children are sitting around a campfire while their father, Night Wolf (Danny Trejo), tells them a story about the very mountain they live on and the fact that it is cursed. We flash back to the mountain in 1846 and we witness members of the Donner Party who spent that winter snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas and who resorted to cannibalism in order to survive. Naturally, with this being a zombie movie, the filmmakers incorporate those real-life events with the fictional aspects that they turned into zombies as they were treading on the very mountain we have been told is cursed. The mountain, wanting to start anew, blows its top, literally and spews out lava that kills all the bad and evil surrounding it and things go back to normal. Until now!
Back to present day and the mountain once again, is starting to rumble and residents who live on the mountain and in nearby towns, are being evacuated. Mindy (Moniqua Plante) and her daughter Nicole (Nicole Cummins) and boyfriend Ryan (Kevin Norman) are in the process of evacuating their mountain home when Nicole has the bright idea of traveling further up the mountain to try and persuade her old grandfather Ben (Robert F. Lyons) to leave his cabin and come with them. Of course, there is tension between Mindy and Ben that is never fully explained but suffice to say, the trip up to Ben’s cabin and his reluctance to leave, puts everyone in danger as the mountain erupts, exuding molten hot magma.
Oh yeah, and lava zombies that if they touch you, will burn you, that being the only deviation from regular zombies. And in true horror zombie film fashion, the humans must try to make their way down the mountain, all the while avoiding flowing lava, hot zombies and a half-naked woman who decided to climb the rumbling mountain to take naked selfies of herself. No wonder the mountain blew its top! When I heard the title “The Burning Dead” and saw the artwork that showed zombies rising from boiling hot lava, I thought okay, this could be an interesting take on this particular genre but the artwork, unfortunately, is the only good aspect of this whole movie.
Danny Trejo almost covers the entire poster for the movie but only appears onscreen for a matter of minutes and the acting is so contrived, it makes “Sharknado” look like “The Godfather.” Some of the best zombie movies have taken place in one or very few locations and have worked because they dealt with human emotions and drama within the confines of their solitary setting. “The Burning Dead” takes place on a California mountainside and while I give the filmmakers kudos for breaking away from the norm and wanting to expand their zombie universe from one setting to an entire mountain, here, while the location itself is beautiful to look at, it’s the story that is a huge letdown. It never fully explains how these lava zombies exist, even a line from one character could explain it but that never happens.
We see them coming out of the ground and we’re expected to just go with it. Even for a cheesy movie like this, there are expectations that need to be met and sadly, they never are. As an indie filmmaker myself for over thirty years, I can see where the filmmakers were coming from. They wanted to approach the zombie genre from a different aspect and while commendable for their efforts, sometimes, it’s not always a good idea to change formulaic. “Night of the Living Dead,” “Dawn of the Dead” and even “Shaun of the Dead” all took place at one central location and that element always seems to work. Even “The Walking Dead,” while part of the show has the main characters traveling, most times, they wind up in a location and stay there for an extended period of time.
Zombies are zombies but how the humans in the story deal with their situation and circumstance, is what elevates it above other movies of its ilk. Zombies drool and growl and bite and eat, that will never change, some walk while others run but in the end, they’re still zombies. We need to be able to connect with the humans first and foremost in order for us to care about them, otherwise, when the zombies attack, we just don’t care. “The Burning Dead” is one of those movies that probably sounded great on paper but in the end, with its cheese factor through the roof, preposterous storyline and campy acting, it adds nothing new to the genre and actually makes you yearn for Romero’s classics.
On VOD March 3rd and DVD April 7th
