Dead Rising Watchtower is an original film from Crackle made in 2015 back when it was still a SONY thing. It’s based around the Dead Rising games from CAPCOM which was first released in 2006.

The game would have moderate success and spawn several sequels and add ons for those sequels. The first game’s protagonist, Frank West, would prove popular with audiences, being more of an everyday man than your typical gaming hero. He’s tough, gritty, grizzled, gnarly and is a photojournalist who also sports a wicked sense of humour, he’d be more relatable to most other gaming leads at the time.

Dead Rising Watchtower is not based specifically on any of the games, but instead places itself between the second and third games timeline wise.

It’s not the most original ever zombie film – Not necessarily a bad thing, I mean – There is only so much you can do with a zombie outbreak. Even the first Dead Rising game wasn’t the most original concept in the world other than its uniqueish gameplay element of being against the clock.
The characters in the film are mostly new characters for the film. The main protagonist of the first game, Frank West does feature as a supporting character but he’s not really a part of the main plot other than to provide a sort of commentary.

Virginia Madsen plays Maggie, she’s an original character for the film, although she does share some similarities to characters from the games universe. Of course, this isn’t Virginia’s first dance with Zombies, oh no. She faced off against them once before in the 1987 film, Zombie High. Well, kinda.

Can Dead Rising Watchtower fix the sins of the past and reinvigorate the world’s trust in Virginia Madsen zombie films? Can it reassure the world that all films based on video games aren’t terrible?

Well. Uhm. Erm.

Anyway…The film deals with the Zombie outbreak after it began. Internet Reporter Chase Cater (Jesse Metcalfe)  alongside his Camera Operator Jordan Blair (Keegan Connor Tracy) are covering stories of people who are escaping the latest outbreak of the Zombie virus in East Mission, Oregon.

It’ll be no surprise for anyone to learn that things go wrong, the military get involved with some shady behind the scene population control stuff and it all kind of goes downhill from there.

I’ve said and or complained about films wasting Virginia Madsen’s talents before, and this one is no different. If you’ve seen the film, then you’ll know how hard this is to say without spoiling anything, and if you’ve not seen the film then thank me for this later;

I say her talents are wasted in context of the spoiler, but truth be told she’s the adult in the room on this one and while none of the acting is particularly bad the main cast is made up of familiar faces from TV in similar roles to what you normally see them in, not a bad thing but not in the same league as Virginia Madsen either.

The movie itself isn’t that bad as far as films based on video games go. I mean, it’s unlikely it was ever going to be winning any awards, but the story is decent enough and fits in well with the universe it inherits from the games. It’s also fair to point out that the film can be enjoyed without any knowledge of the games, it does a good job of this.

It’s pretty easy to reccomend this if you’re a fan of Virginia Madsen, zombies and or video games, it’s not going to bore you to death and easily passes the time. There are far worse films from both genres you could be watching.

Even if you aren’t then it’s still a passable way to kill some time. And, if you do like this one then there is a sequel to be watched as well in the form of Dead Rising: Endgame. No Virginia Madsen in that one though I’m afraid…

Availability:

Good. Easy to find on DVD and Blu-Ray at the time of writing, and for cheap. Some streaming services also have to watch, rent or buy depending on your location or access to a VPN.

Gallery:

Trailer:

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Karen Benjamin