Crew
Director – Glenn R. Miller, Screenplay – Scotty Mullen, Producer – David Michael Latt, Photography – Kyle Gentz, Music – Christopher Cano & Chris Ridenhour, Visual Effects Supervisor – Aaron Witlin, Makeup Effects – Christina Lyon, Production Design – Kalise Wallace. Production Company – The Asylum.
Cast
Erica Sturdefant (Brooke Sullivan), Jonathon Buckley (Randy Hock), Terra Strong (Jezel), Jarrid Masse (Toronto), Jumarcus Mason (K.D.), Caleb Thomas (Logan), Peter Stickles (Isaiah), Troy “Tax” Castaneda (Ranger Mike), Adam Meredith (Ford), Ashley Alvarado (Layne), Jaime Nungary (Al), Himanshu Prasad (Rod), Kim Nielsen (Dr Ellen Rogers)
Plot
A group of poachers break into an animal preserve in the remote wilderness. There chief warden Brooke Sullivan is preparing to release one of her big cats back into the wilds. Among the poachers, Jezel injects a porcupine with a serum of her own making. They are then captured by the preserve’s security team. As Brooke and the others watch, the porcupine becomes zombified and fires deadly quills. The infection quickly spreads to other animals at the preserve. Under attack by the zombified animals and having six hours to wait for an evacuation helicopter, Brooke and the others are forced to cooperate with the poachers for mutual survival.
Zoombies (2016) was a modest hit for The Asylum, centred around a zoo where the animals become zombified. Director Glenn R. Miller went on to make a sequel with Zoombies 2 here, followed by a third film in the series with Aquarium of the Dead (2021). There was also a videogame Escape from the Zoombies (2016).
It isn’t apparent until some way into Zoombies 2 that it is not a sequel but in fact a prequel to Zoombies. This is not something made clear by the film’s publicity. It is initially confusing watching the poachers break into the preserve and wonder why Terra Strong is injecting regular animals with a serum, before you realise that the film is depicting the origins of the zoombie plague. The film ends with the zoombies rampaging off into the wider world. And we do get a cameo from Kim Nielsen, the lead from the first film (and the only figure connecting all three films).
The Asylum’s in-house effects team has been getting noticeably better in the last few years. Here the film delivers some quite entertaining set-pieces with the assorted zoombies – a poacher tossed up into the air to be impaled on the horn of a rhinoceros; a zombified porcupine that fires deadly quills before it is electrocuted by a prod in mid-air; a jeep fleeing pursuit by a rampaging rhino; Terra Strong being devoured by a crocodile.
Some of the effects are a little variable. There is a very dodgy water snake, while the attacking hippopotamus is unexceptional. On the other hand, the hippo scene is saved by an entertainingly ridiculous scene where Jumarcus Mason is tossed up into the air and caught in the hippo’s open mouth. In fact, it is the entertainment value of many of these animal attacks, which approaches something of The Asylum’s hit of Sharknado (2013), that makes Zoombies 2 a whole lot more watchable than you expect.
In addition, the performances are of a much higher calibre than the usual ones that you get in The Asylum’s films, which usually seem to be faces recruited from a hurried casting call that you know you’ll never see again. Both Erica Sturdefant and Terra Strong give performances that could easily go on to much better budgeted mainstream work elsewhere.
Glenn R. Miller was a former assistant director on numerous films for The Asylum and other companies. He made his directorial debut with the Found Footage horror The Bell Witch Haunting (2013), followed by The Co-Ed and the Zombie Stoner (2014) and Santa Claws (2014), all for The Asylum.
Trailer here