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This live action adaptation of Capcom's zombie-mashing series may not be the worst video game movie of all time, but that's largely because it's so painfully tedious that it's hard to muster the negative emotion needed to rank it against the likes of Super Mario Bros and Double Dragon.In many respects, it almost doesn't even need the source material since the setup is so generic. There's a zombie outbreak. A handful of people are trapped in the quarantine zone. That's pretty much it. With its shopping mall setting, the first Dead Rising riffed hard and shamelessly on Romero's Dawn of the Dead, but this movie doesn't even aim that high. Despite being produced by Legendary Digital, the online arm of the same production company responsible for The Dark Knight, Man of Steel and Godzilla, and despite featuring several recognisable actors, it both looks and feels like an amateur hour web series made by people whose only exposure to the horror genre comes from a few trailers for The Walking Dead and a diet of Syfy Original Movies.
The main character is Chase Carter, a cocky reporter for an internet news site. It's hinted that he has perhaps been reduced to this lowly state after working in TV news, but like every character beat in the movie it goes unexplained and unexplored. The film acknowledges the events of the three video games, setting itself in an America where zombie contagion is a known quantity, with the suppression drug Zombrex used to keep the infected from turning.
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