Film Review: GERM Z (2013)

I love zombie films.  I even like bad ones if they try to be original and are entertaining.  Germ Z (2013) is not one of these types of films.  This is one of those films that borrow from other (much better) films trying to pass it off as its own but fails miserably.  

 

When a military satellite scheduled to be decommissioned is struck by a meteor, the shrapnel crashes to the Earth in a small town.  While military personnel tries to clean up their mess the residents of the small town start to act crazy and violent to the point of being driven to kill others.  The film follows the ideas and plot of any standard zombie film but more importantly the modern day infectious disease films like 28 Days Later… (2002) and The Crazies (2010). 

Unfortunately, there are many problems with this film.  First of all the satellite falls in the uninhabited wilderness of the town so the only person who should be infected would be random hunters and fisherman.  It’s not even a day before most of the town is infected and running through the woods killing random people.  It’s never explained how the infection starts either through physical contact with the satellite, blood contact, or air contact because some people who get blood in their face never get infected whereas those in close proximity also never seem to get infected so there is no consistency with this.

Written by J.T. Boone and directed by Boone and John Craddock the film is your straight forward zombie film with random people running and getting killed and running some more before eventually getting killed later.  The film never elevates above its lowest common denominator and never offers anything new as a horror film or a zombie film in general.