In Seagal's first venture into the horror genre, he plays Tao, the sword-wielding leader of a four-person kill team out to hunt down and kill as many of the infected population as possible. In a sweep of a deserted medical complex, his team runs across a group of survivors trying to make their way to safety. The team must work quickly to gather the survivors together and escort them to safety before the hordes of mindless flesh-eaters overwhelm them. As if the odds stacked against them were not already enough, the group must make their way out of the complex before a military strike at dawn, meant to cleanse the area completely, regardless of human casualties.
If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, it is because it has all been done before. What is touted as a Seagal versus vampires movie on the box turns into a bad mixture of Night of the Living Dead and I Am Legend. In fact, calling this a Steven Seagal movie at all is a stretch. Seagal, looking out of shape and over-weight, ghosts his way through the movie, occasionally entering a fray or dropping some minor bit of dialogue. The fight scenes, a staple in most Seagal movies, are poorly conceptualized and boring, a fact made even worse by extremely bad cinematography. The character development is non-existent and no connection is created between the actors and the audience, a fact that becomes abundantly clear when members of the group start succumbing to the zombies and I felt absolutely no remorse regarding their fate.
Speaking of dialogue, there are several attempts made throughout the movie to drop some quotable phrases. All of these attempts fail miserably, seeming forced and out of context. Seagal's band of hunters is comprised of himself, another male hunter (Tanoai Reed) and two women. The women, who could have been played equally well by mechanized cardboard cutouts, do not utter a word between them at any point in the movie, instead walking around with large knives in what can best be described as a drug-induced stupor.
Unfortunately, as bad movies go, this one pretty much had no redeeming qualities to speak of. Had it been a light-hearted, somewhat comical attempt, it might have worked, or at least been tolerable. Sadly, it tried all too hard to be a serious horror film. Quite frankly, the scariest part of this movie is the fact that it was released for audience viewing. This film fully invests Steven Seagal into the realm of the "B"-lister, if not lower, and should be avoided by pretty much everyone.
