Writer: Karen L. Wolf
Director: Tor Ramsey
Children of the Living Dead is a 2001 straight to video release most notable for two of the names attached to it: Tom Savini doing a cameo as a gung-ho zombie killer and the late Bill Hinzman in charge of cameras. Which just goes to prove that smart people can make bad decisions.
The film starts promisingly in the middle of a zombie outbreak. This turns out to be localised and pretty much under control; shooting gangs take out the undead in an almost casual manner. Two cops decide to check out an old house, looking for some missing kids – in this world zombies apparently leave kids alone. All is going well until Savini’s character encounters patient zero: Abbott Hayes. Hayes is a serial killer who as a zombie is super-strong, intelligent almost immune to bullets.
Fast forward 14 years and the kids are now teenagers who don’t believe the old stories of serial killers and the undead. When they visit the old house, their presence brings Hayes out of hiding…
So now the real story starts. Except that it doesn’t. Instead we skip forward another year and the house and attached cemetery are being turned into a used car lot. Doing this, of course, means digging up the bodies.
So now we get the beef, yes? No such luck.
The tedious narrative drags on, complete with a clumsy infodump explaining that Hayes became a serial killer and rapist because his mum dressed him up as a girl! It’s not until 50 minutes into the 90 minute film that the zombie teens finally make their tentative appearance. Does the tension start to build now? Sorry, we’ve another ten dull minutes to wait before then.
The final half hour is actually quite watchable in a low budget way, although there’s still another crude infodump to come. By that point most of the audience will probably have given up and decided to watch something more exciting such as competitive flower arranging.
I’m usually pretty forgiving of low budget movies, a good script can compensate for some pretty dreadful direction and acting. But Wolf’s script for Children of the Living Dead is beyond awful. The story is disjointed, unconvincing and badly told.