The Rezort (2016)

Number Rolled: 33

Movie Name/Year: The Rezort (2016)

Tagline: A vacation to die for.

Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Length: 90 minutes

Rating: TV-MA

Production Companies: LWH Entertainment, Umedia, The Kraken Films, Black Camel Pictures, Captain Starlight Company, Creative Scotland, Gloucester Place Films

Producer: Cheyenne Conway, Paul Gerstenberger, Nick Gillott, Al Hardiman, Robert How, Nadia Khamlichi, Martin Metz, Adrian Politowski, Karl Richards, Bastien Sirodot, Mat Wakeham, Charlotte Walls, Gilles Waterkeyn

Director: Steve Barker

Writer: Paul Gerstenberger

Actors: Dougray Scott, Jessica De Gouw, Martin McCann, Claire Goose, Elen Rhys, Jassa Ahluwalia, Lawrence Walker, Kevin Shen, Sean Power, Jamie Ward, Dave Wong, Shane Zaza, Stefan Pejic

Stunts: Guiomar Alonso, María Jesús Lucas, Alejandro López Estacio, Eduardo Moratilla, David Newton, Ricardo Rocca, Seon Rogers, César Solar, Cuco Usín

Blurb from Netflix: After a global zombie war, the living dead are confined to a luxury island resort and hunted by tourists on safari -- until the security system fails.

Selina’s Point of View:

The idea of The Rezort was interesting and original. Unfortunately, that’s where the ‘unique’ aspect ends.

What I got was a zombie version of Jurassic Park (1993).

To be honest, had I known that before I started the film, I still would have been excited to watch it. I love Jurassic Park and zombies – combining them sounds like fun.

As that aspect goes, The Rezort wasn’t bad. The acting and settings were good. There was nothing wrong with the script at all, either. There were some highly memorable lines, in fact. The problem was that there was nothing to set this film apart from every other zombie film in the world.

This was a recipe film.

It followed absolutely every trope in the genre. Normally, that’s not the biggest issue – recipes can still be good – but the plot idea was so creative that I was craving something original when I turned it on. It was like going to a five-star restaurant and being served a diner-grade grilled cheese. Sure, it would still taste good – but it would be nowhere near what you were looking for.

I guess that it comes down to me having had expectations that were way too high. Had I gone into this viewing experience with normal expectations, I would have been blown away.

My final thought is that The Rezort is a decent film. It’s something that I could see myself watching again, and even recommending to others… those people would just have to go into it understanding what they were about to see.

Cat’s Point of View:

I was intrigued when I saw this title hit Netflix some time back. This is one of those movies where I’m drawn in by the cast just as much as the story. Dougray Scott (There Be Dragons, Death Race: Inferno, Tiger House), who I’ve been fond of for some time; and Jessica De Gouw (Dracula, Underground, OtherLife), who first piqued my interest through her role on Arrow (2012-) were a considerable draw.

The zombies helped, too.

The dice have been teasing us with this one for a while, which made it rather satisfying that its number finally, and quite literally, came up.

At the outset, my initial guess about the film was that it would resemble something like Jurassic Park (1993) if there were zombies instead of dinosaurs. After watching, I can say that was fairly close to the mark.

While the movie does stick pretty close to the known zombie recipe, there were a few tweaks here and there that prevented this film from being a stale re-hash. It was still a bit cookie-cutter, sure, but at least it was a cutter with an interesting shape.

I also appreciated what they tried to do with layering in the moral and ethical dilemmas regarding game safari resorts and the callousness of society.

Alas, I couldn’t enjoy this quite as much as I would have liked due to the heavy usage of shaky-cam. It’s possible that it affected me more than normal because I haven’t been feeling well – but too much of it on any regular day fails to sit well with me. It made me want to look away at times that I likely shouldn’t have wanted to. Thankfully, it wasn’t the entire movie.

All told, I wouldn’t steer anyone away from watching this film, but I’m not sure I’d be in any hurry to watch it again.

Languages

Speech Available: English

Subtitles Available: English, French, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 60%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 22%

Metascore – None

Metacritic User Score – None

IMDB Score – 5.3/10

Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 3/5

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 3/5

Movie Trailer: