Inmate Zero (2020) User Reviews

Tedious and far too long

[mjsreg · 4/10 · 12 January 2020]

This really isn't a good movie.

Right from the start the majority of characters are totally unbelievable and the acting below par. To be fair to the cast, many of them don't have much experience, so it is down to the director to guide and get the most out of them - which they clearly didn't.

The story isn't that good to begin with and being stretched to 1h 46m makes it something of a trial to stay awake through. I was very relieved when the end credits finally appeared.

There is no sense of atmosphere or drama to bring the viewer in to the world of the characters. It is like watching endless slides of someone's boring holiday snaps.

You'll get more tension and fear from watching a washing machine on spin cycle.

Nay

[LoremIpsum321 · 3/10 · 12 January 2020]

While it's not the worst film there is, it's still below average.

The excecution is quite flawed and feels rather cheap, from the direction to the weapon FX. But a couple of gory melee effects were not bad.

The Story is simple and didn't make too much sense. The script is poor, some of the actors did alright with what was given, some did not.

I've watched worse, but there is certainly no need to spend time on this one.

It ain't Shakespeare, but...

[methis · 5/10 · 29 January 2020]

It certainly deserves better than the bashing it's getting from some reviewers here. I found the lead actress did a good job of making a compelling character despite some story limitations. In fact, most of the actors were decent. The story is far from original, and I think that the market for zombie fare is oversaturated. That said, this is far better than your average streaming-service horror flick (to me, it seemed more of an action thriller with a good dose of horror elements), with a plot that's simple enough to follow while internet-surfing, though it stole my attention from my surfing from time to time. I've seen plenty worse, and I look forward to seeing the lead actress again.

My review is scarier than the movie

[movieman-25353 · 12 January 2020]

Best movie ever, The entire cast deserve awards. The director is a genius. My account is brand new so there's no reason to doubt my review.

Do the producers have time travel?

[jamstigator-41170 · 1/10 · 12 January 2020]

Make a list of all the most horrible qualities that the worst movies have that you've ever seen. Post the list on the net somewhere. Then watch this movie and see how they just totally nailed what was on your list! Did they travel forward in time, see your list of the most horrible qualities of the worst movies ever made, then go back in time and make this movie, making sure to check off everything on your list? You tell me!

Just Awful

[abodaaaa · 2/10 · 18 December 2019]

One of the worst movies ever. Terrible acting, ridiculous story, so many inconsistencies.

Brain dead.....

[s3276169 · 4/10 · 14 January 2020]

On the surface this film looks promising but like so much else these days, its purely superficial.

The casting is passable, the setting is actually pretty decent but so much else is horribly lacking. The zombies are more silly than scary and there's a real lack of quality action and tension, this film desperately needs.

Frankly, there is a whole raft of superior zombie films out there that surpass this one in most respects.

4/10.

Do not waste your precious time & money

[winterrhythm · 1/10 · 8 December 2019]

This is one of the worst movie I have everseen in my life. Trust me, you will have no regret skipping it.

Human is not live as a sacrifice, they sacrifice themselves because of conscience

[daphleung · 4/10 · 11 January 2020]

Human is not live as a sacrifice, they sacrifice themselves because of conscience.

The story is about an outbreak of a deadly virus spreads in an isolated prison in St. Leonard's Island because of an inhuman medical trials, those criminals desperately find their ways out of this jail.

Many violent criminals are women and kept in prison, the main-actress is Stone (Jess Chanliau), she helps others escape from the prison. The story starts from a scene that Stone's mother is walking closer to the sea to die, it's so confusing and cannot be understood bc it shows up with no purposes.

Those bloodthirsty zombies are not scary and surprising at all. You can be one of them if you apply black eyeshadow or black ink on face. At the beginning, u may think zombies are attracted by light or sound, but at the end it is so confusing why they act like this.

Personally, I highly not recommend u to watch, so time-wasting and boring, the plot is so confusing and don't know what's going on. Trailer tells you everything, don't buy ticket for it.

A McDonald's hamburger of a zombie movie. You KNOW what you're getting. Don't watch it if that's not what you want.

[S_Soma · 7/10 · 18 January 2020]

While INMATE ZERO's makers tried pretty hard to dress it up, INMATE ZERO is just a variant of a zombie movie. That's just the truth of it.

If you're a chef, there's about a million dishes that begin with mirepoix. Similarly, every zombie movie, in addition to its basic premise of living-dead people trying to eat living-living people (or just their brains if you happen to be a purist), also has at least 2 plot points: 1) an "origin story" to explain how zombies came to be and 2) some kind of (hopefully novel) contextual circumstance into which zombies are going to be arbitrarily injected in the hopes of flogging up some viewer interest in this hyper-overused story "idea". At this point you have to ask which is more "living-dead"? The story idea or the zombies?

For INMATE ZERO, the origin of the zombies is a medical experiment gone wrong because, you know, we've never heard that one before. And the "novel" contextual circumstance is a super isolated prison-island, a thousand miles from the nearest mainland shore.

The zombies in INMATE ZERO are of the, somewhat rarer, hyper-fast variety, very similar to 28 DAYS LATER. No drooling, slowly staggering extras here. Again, this isn't original; it's just a choice option out of the Big Book of Zombie Recipes.

For side dishes we have a few selfish and self-serving characters, a few heroic and self-sacrificing characters, and a whole truckload of redshirts for their gore possibilities. Because with 3 you get egg roll.

And for dessert we have the Post-Climax Surprise of the heroin suddenly turning up with the zombie disease just as the rescue helicopter takes off with her on it. I think this is supposed to imply that now the zombie disease is going to make it off the isolated island and infect the world. I hope I got that impression erroneously because that would make absolutely no sense for a half dozen reasons.

As run-of-the-mill zombie movies go, INMATE ZERO isn't half bad. Lots of gore, adequate acting, and a properly dark and brooding location. A little over-the-top in the melodramatic "you're just prisoner scum so we can mistreat you any way we want" department but that's sort of de rigueur, isn't it? INMATE ZERO is primarily limited by its premise and plot line; it can only rise so far before it's weighed down by its pedigree.

If you're the sort of person who actually thinks of a zombie movie as "entertainment", especially at this point in the history of moviemaking, I would think you would be at least satisfactorily happy with INMATE ZERO. I mean, you KNOW what this movie's entire shtick is from the get go. And Shakespeare didn't write no zombie stories, did he? To its genuine credit, INMATE ZERO actually DOESN'T drag its material any further into the mud than it already is intrinsically by engaging in crappy workmanship, so it gives you what it says on the tin. If you go into it with unreasonably high expectations then that's your fault.

I have given INMATE ZERO a 7/10 star rating. Do not mistake this to mean I thought it was a great movie or that I particularly liked it. For star ratings, I use a relative scale based on my impression of how close the movie came to being the movie it's makers intended it to be and how well it fits or ranks within its fundamental genre, which, of course in this case is zombie movies. INMATE ZERO, I am convinced, is exactly what it was intended to be. If you find it particularly disappointing then I would suggest that you should've known exactly what you were getting into when you decided to watch it and whatever problems you have with it are more a function of your bad judgment for picking it to watch than anything intrinsically wrong with INMATE ZERO itself.

Nothing compares to a zombie

[vilseipannkakan74 · 4/10 · 7 March 2020]

Sinéad O'Connor is jailed on a prison island far away from civilization, where some shady doctors perform medical experiments on the inmates in less than sanitary conditions.

Generic plot but brilliantly executed horror

[sophaljonesy · 8/10 · 8 January 2020]

When a bunch of deathrow mates have to team up with jail guards to survive because an experiment had gone wrong, you could expect a lot of violence and bloodletting. This is basically the plot of the movie, but somehow the scares are very effective, and the director manages to convey dread throughout the movie, even before any action begins. The setting is used brilliantly, and creates a gothic horror atmosphere. The protagonists, eventhough they are hardened criminals, are all relatable and you feel for them. Nothing much is told about the characters but their interactions is enough to reveal their humanity. Thus making their deaths very impactful. There is also a good cop and bad cop to make things interesting. There is violence and bloodshed but they are not used gratituiously, making it very effective. I must say I really loved this film and recommend it to all. This could have turned out to be a generic gory slasher but is in fact one of the better than some big budget horrors.

Gory fun.

[jp_91 · 6/10 · 13 August 2020]

An interesting zombie film with funny characters and a lot of gore, great makeup effects, creepy locations, good cinematography full of chiaroscuro frames, a fine executed direction: horror and some drama. The script could be better, some drama scenes are a kind bored, but the acting is good, especially Jess Chanliau playing Stone. An entertaining film, no more.

Be all you can be

[nogodnomasters · 4/10 · 6 March 2020]

The film opens with Stone (Jess Chanliau) a death row prisoner being asked to volunteer for a drug experiment in exchange for life in prison on St Lawrence Island, an international prison. She refuses. While in the infirmary with a bad cut, a patient becomes a raving cannibal. The infection spreads until there is a small group of guards and prisoners somewhat working together to survive.

We find out about Stone's crime about an hour into the film. While there was an "inmate zero" it really didn't play any importance other than making the title. They had some decent diverse characters, but being an international prison with Russians and Asians never played into the feature other than a few bad accents. The hide and seek with the infected folks and bickering started to wear on.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

I now know why they call it 'porridge'...

[donttouchmeprimate · 4/10 · 14 January 2020]

Because this film was very sloppy. OK that's a bit harsh, it was actually a good effort for a script that seemed bigger than its budget. For the most part the acting was a mixed bag of pretty good to kind of cringey, but I believe a good portion of those cringe-fests were down to a script lacking in any substance, for an example - within 38 minutes 'The Butcher' has to repeat the line "you have no authority now" or something to that effect THREE TIMES! It doesn't sound like much but until that point she had said maybe 40 words in total.

And sure, the action scenes were lacking in any kind of excitement and even though they used choppy editing to cover up the fact that nobody can actually throw a punch without letting out a fart which scares themselves - it still looked terrible and completely ruined the emersion that we're supposed to be watching double-hard dudettes serving life in prison.

Having said that, I really loved the cinematography and creative style I'm which this was shot, can't compliment it enough.

So all in all, not bad really. Good effort.

Oh yeah, and is it just me but when Lennon was introduced did anybody else get a very strong "James Ellis - Sarge" vibe? It was uncanny.

Anybody there??

Worst movie by far

[mczyczlo · 1/10 · 18 January 2020]

By far, on top of my list, the worst movie I've seen. The script was ok, the acting was ok, the story and the directing was terrible. Woman runs across the room to stop someone from blowing her head off. Maybe in a universe when people are faster than bullets... just poor altogether. When I fall asleep during a movie SOBER. That's my que to not finish it the next day.

Cheesy, lame, predictable, low budget zombie film.

[teekieteekybirdie · 1/10 · 14 January 2020]

What the title says...I should have believed the negative reviews and avoided wasting my time watching this. It starts with just a bunch of blood and gore, biting others becoming infected, horrible acting impossible to understand what they're saying because of the thick cheesy horrid irish accent, the main character is the only one who escapes and survives only to be infected in the end. Garbage, just utter garbage, waste of time. If you like gory films with no storyline and no point to them and horrible acting and lame old school effects, then yeah go for it.

Bad Acting Bad script

[mariaadam · 1/10 · 12 March 2020]

I don't want to waist anymore time on this film... So I will keep it short. Idea for the movie is not that bad. But the casting in this film is really really bad. The lead actress had zero charisma. The direction is cheap. Don't waits your life. Don't watch it!

Wow Utter Garbage.

[Snowraven69 · 1/10 · 11 May 2020]

I grew up near Shepton Mallet and actually had friends that worked at that very prison this rubbish was shot.Terrible acting, nonsensical plot and in the end I just didn't care who lived and who died.I should have guessed this movie was going to be utter trash when the standard trend of making women in movies badass moment was established early when it was mentioned at least a billion times in the first 2 seconds of this crap that the main female protagonist was a former "Special forces" soldier and a bodyguard who was wrongly convicted and sent to prison.(Rolls eyes shakes his head but still watched it anyway). Please for the love of sanity avoid this Resident Evil rip off like you'd avoid a plague of zombies

It's a low budget zombie flick-what do you expect?

[skylerboo-03011 · 6/10 · 9 August 2021]

I see a TON of low scores on here. Going into this one you need to look at it for what it is. Its a lower budget zombie movie. Of course it ticks all the low budget boxes like mediocre acting and average special effects. BUT- this movie was still very enjoyable. Don't go into it expecting dawn of the dead quality and you'll be pleasantly surprised. I feel like people think movies have to be million dollar budget projects to be good anymore. Over all 6/10.

Better than the reviews make it out to be

[Stealthy-22960 · 5/10 · 25 December 2021]

I'm a fan of the zombie genre, but I'm also very picky about ones that aren't executed well. I was going into this movie with low expectations since the IMDb rating was below a 5.

Honestly it's not a bad zombie movie. I liked that the setting wasn't the typical city or medical facility type of outbreak. The dark, grimy, old looking prison was effective and may have even added to some of the creepy scenes. I also like that the zombies had blacked out eyes, had some type of sensitive to light and sound, and had glitches of their real selves push through if something triggered its memory. These interpretations all felt fresh to me.

Some of the acting was ok. Look, it's not your Oscar worthy type of stuff, but what zombie flick delivers that type of performance anyway? Well ok, Melissa McBride gives some great scenes in the Walking Dead. So the acting here is the typical B movie caliber .

The makeup of the prisoners and zombies are effective as well.

The plot is a little sketchy or thin on details. It's not clear what they were doing to these prisoners, why or who was behind this entire operation. Even the lead actress back story was questionable. Ok shes a former marine and must have murdered someone, but why would the US send her to some prison in Ireland? If she was tried/convicted in that country, the US would have definitely extradited her being a military personnel to face a US military court. Lol IDK. Then the flashes of her mom by the ocean is never explained. Is her mother dead? Why is she by the ocean? I do like that they tried to use that flashback in the end when the lead finally turned. Too bad the entire movie we are left perplexed of the significance of her visioning her mother by beach until the end.

Anyhow, there was some enjoyable/funny moments of course. I like the Butcher... she had some funny lines and surprisingly I was rooting for the murderer.

I did think the one prisoner referring to the gay male by the F word was just poor taste. The fact they did it twice as if we didn't cringe the first time was just cements how tone death this writer is. It's unnecessary and embarrassing that they thought it would add anything to the plot or tension. Weak and lazy!

Speaking of the gay character, he did ok with his acting. Although the writing was off in explaining in a believable way why he knew so much about the prison layout. Yeah, yeah he mentioned something about helping someone get rich and that's how he had access to the blueprints but that explanation makes no sense. Lazy writing

It was also a little lazy that all the guards seemed either overly aggressive or overly passive and all were pretty much incompetent and skittish cowards. I mean what guard doesn't have all the bullets in his gun while guarding supposedly the most dangerous women in the world? Lol

Overall the move is a solid 5. Not the worst, but not the best either.

Isolated island horror crisis.

[parry_na · 8/10 · 8 September 2021]

I wasn't overly enthused about watching this having read some reviews - which serves me right for reading them before watching! I honestly don't know what some people want from a film. That's to say, I enjoyed this.

It took me a while to appreciate the lead actress. Unlike other cast members, Jess Chanliau initially mumbles her lines and is incomprehensible some of the time. A shame, because Stone is very interesting and not a run-of-the-mill heroine, and when circumstances become more intense, her performance is excellent. The standard of acting elsewhere is often very good, with only a few performances not quite convincing.

The story involves a zombie breakout on an island prison. The location is beautifully filmed and we get a real sense of isolation. Also, as Warden Crowe insists, extreme measures must be taken not to allow the infection to spread onto the mainland.

The story moves at an energetic pace, features lots of well defined characters and at just over 90 minutes, gives us time to get to know them. There are some impressive moments of gore, and the infected are very convincing - descendants of films like '28 Days Later' rather than the shufflers from Romero's vision.

Pretty Good Movie

[koolmas · 6/10 · 1 August 2021]

It was predictable but I still enjoyed the movie. I did not see the ending coming and perhaps a set up for a sequel of which I would watch. You really know what your getting so I disagree with the very low stars. I have seen MUCH MUCH worse.

Give it a watch with no expectations and you might enjoy it. On a note, I want to Produce a Zombie movie so call me if you do the sequel.

Question

[tmccull52 · 5/10 · 27 April 2020]

Does anyone make horror movies any more where the hero/heroine DOESN'T die at the end?

This isn't the best zombie movie that I've ever seen, nor is it the worst. I actually liked the Stone character, played by Jess Chanliau, but she battles her way through an entire prison of "the infected", only to become one herself at the very end, right after she's been rescued by helicopter.

Bad

[kathmummybear · 3/10 · 2 October 2020]

Awlful acting ! The female lead mumbles her way through her lines and the direction is awful . The idea was ok if not very original but there needs to be a script as well ! It felt like everyone was making it up as they went along