Against The Dark (2009)

Cast: Steven Seagal, Tanoai Reed and Jenna Harrison

Writer: Mathew Klickstein

Director: Richard Crudo

A few days ago I'm at a friends house, we always chat films and put each-other on to some nifty flicks, of course only if one of us has never seen it. So he's going through his stuff and asks "Have you seen Against The Dark" to which I reply no. He then says "I won't put you through that", I respond "Why not" and he says "It's a zombie flick with Steven Seagal. I then began to burst out laughing to which I responded after "I WANT IT". I didn't care if it were crappy or what, I needed to see this cause it sounded mythical and sure enough it was Seagal running around in a trench coat kicking. So hold on to your eyeballs as I give my usual formatted break down on Steven Seagal Zombie Ass Kicker, I mean Against The Dark.

The film is set in a city obviously, I'm not to sue if the city was disclosed but it's definitely a city, apparently the city has become over run with infected and as usual people are doing their best to survive against the hordes of infected running amongst them. Some are survivors with the will to live while others become hunters with the will of chance to clean out the infected. Ultimately Seagal is the leader of one of these hunting groups and they're running around kicking zombie ass with swords, guns and knives and also be hitting them very hard and throwing them into stuff. They eventually run into a group of survivors in a hospital (which the hospital sign resemble the Kotton Mouth Kings band logo), whose numbers are dropping rather quickly and since Seagal's crew are for the people, they ultimately fight by their side to try and get them out of the hospital and into safety, only to move on and continue their hunt.

Okay, now some where along the lines, the film confuses me. It opens with the definition of the word infect, shows chaos and people being eaten by other people, so naturally we think zombies. Somewhere in the film one of the characters dismisses the fact they the infected are eating humans and turns it into "they crave blood" and then acknowledges them as vampires. The trailer of the film also acknowledges the infected as vampires as well, whereas another character in the film acknowledges them as mutants. So I go with the latter and stick with mutants because they sure as hell didn't die like zombies, seeing how some were just shot in the chest and I remember seldom seeing head shots. But seeing that I solved my confusion, my real confusion was why would something like that even be written in the script in the first place. You either make a zombie movie or a vamp movie or a mutant movie not try to blend all 3 and confuse the audience. That's just STUPID!

The plot was pretty intact, had a stable idea with terrible writing decisions and mediocre to no character development at all.It also seemed kind of every where and the fact the film is sold on the idea of Steven Seagal as the star is just I guess to market the film. He is in the film and is the leader of the bad asses but they're more like a sub plot than the main characters, which for some reason their seem to be entirely too much of. There are disastrous scenes of over exemplified fear, such a display is when an infected person is running towards the group and everyone takes off screaming bloody murder while Seagal and his crew just wait for this infected guy and blow him away. That's pretty much the survivors blatantly putting themselves in danger, and I think realistically or in a better film, someone would've written it a little more towards the obvious. Also i couldn't get past some of the acting in the film, the femme fatales in Seagal's team looked like they were there just to look hot and act tough and stay shut. Just one example.

The death scenes were also pretty mediocre seeing that this kinda plays more like an action film with horror elements, Though you do get some blood and gore here and there, nothing too over the top or to really be impressed by. The infected ranged some looked zombie like some looked like humans with shark teeth all and all the fx altogether didn't really stand out and added to the blandness of the film. Though their were explosions which are fun to see and most of them were actual explosions as well so that's fun.

Overall, I laughed through the whole film and thought the idea they were going for was rather interesting and good, but it was executed in an almost unforgivable manor. The cinematography wasn't to horrible, their are a lot of great shots, some for me which exist during the explosions at the end. But the idea behind the infected was flawed and maybe if they would've been a little more spot on with what they were, the film could have worked a bit better. If you're a Steven Seagal fan you might want to check it out for the sake of being a fan. If not you might still want to check it out for the sake of a good laugh. Its not a completely terrible film, it could be boring as hell which it isn't cause there's a lot of action in it, it just fails as a horror film and not even Steven Seagal can save it from two and a half severed heads out of five.

2.5/5