Monday, April 15, 2019

The Review: Black Summer


Black Summer 2/10

Full of spoilers. This should have been called Loud Noises. Black Summer was suggested to me by my Netflix in a strange way of pushing me towards canceling my subscription (which will occur as soon as I finish the third season of Hap & Leonard). When I watch zombie shit I need to find one or more people to relate to. If not that I want someone I can cheer on through the movie or series. This gave me one person and she didn't even speak English. I'll get to her later. This is about a zombie outbreak that has happened. No one knows why but it is a thing and widely known. A mother, father, and daughter are making their way to a military convoy to head to the stadium. The stadium is the magical place where everyone will be safe which sounds like a fucking nightmare to me considering when this country uses a stadium for sanctuary crime, rape, and violence occur. And that's just at the Ram games. By the way, if you liked the pilot episode, good for you, because none of the other episodes feel the same way.


So this family is racing to the checkpoint and more people are following as they begin to saunter there. At this checkpoint you have to have papers to get in. You also get scanned and patted down. The daughter gets on a truck but dad is stopped and questioned. Mother is like “He's fine let us go because we have a kid!” Not so fast, turbo two tone! The husband has a bleeding wound on his stomach. All hell breaks loose and the daughter gets bused away while the parents run into a house for safety. So you telling me this lady knew her husband was fucking sick and was still willing to let him on a bus heading towards safety with her daughter and a bunch of innocent ass people?! Are you fucking joking?! Do people love family that much? Everyone I know knows that if they become a zombie they get handled with the swiftness and if I turn into one to take my Black ass out. No emotional pleas or goodbyes. Just take care of business. So of course the husband turns and is killed by a military dude who is not really. Mother gives him this creepy ass hug and explains her situation.

Already I am not sympathetic to this woman and anything she is fighting for. This series starts introducing characters left and right and jumping back and forth through time which would be clever if I wasn't still trying to figure out the story and the other characters. This show is like “Nah! Remember that woman that got ran over? Here is her story...meaning her boyfriends story. Enjoy!” So that military dude I mentioned was captured by the military for some “loot” reason or other and gets free and helps the mother so now they together. The boyfriend who is deaf whose girl got ran over and turns into a zombie is a part of the team eventually along with this guy named Lance. I mentioned Lance by name because fuck that guy. I will explain why later as well. So this team of people are trying to make their way to the stadium while another group that consists of a Latino dude that has wild mood swings that wants to get to his family steals the car of an old lady who I thought would have a mysterious back story but ends up eating windshield, and the hero we don't deserve named Sun. Her name is longer but she shortens it.


Sun speaks almost no English but manages to out act everyone in this series. I normally don't mind when another language is spoken in a film because there are subtitles. There are no fucking subtitles when she talks and she talks a lot. Would it have hurt to know what she was saying? Her reaction to situations is more realistic and reasonable than everyone else on this goddamn show. While she is with Latino man and old woman this big ass truck keeps chasing them down. I was thinking it was some government thing because the old lady seemed particularly afraid of it. Nope. Turns out it is just some assholes that decided to fuck with people during the zombie apocalypse. That's it. So old lady flies out of car because she does not wear seat belts but she comes back to life. Yeah. Turns out you don't have to just get bitten to turn which is unfair bullshit. You also turn into a zombie within moments which makes the whole thing with the father at the start make no sense and is a shitty plot hole.


There is an episode that takes place in a diner because there is always a diner scene in zombie shit. There is Sun, Latino man, Latino thug, his lady, and some random ass dude. They were in the truck chasing down Sun and Latino man. Latino thug says Spanish things every few words and if you don't speak Spanish but can imitate what you think a Spanish thug sounds like you have just become this guy. Random dude says he and Latino man are the alphas and they need a plan. The plan is to get attacked by zombies and then running back into the diner to panic some more. Random dude ends up getting left outside to get attacked. The mother and military guy arrive and they all gather and fight off the remaining zombies. They end up raiding a warehouse fighting of sexual harassment, attempted rape, and rogue soldiers. They get a lot of guns and suddenly everyone knows how to use an assault rifle. Some of the guns have infinite ammo while others have nine bullets. The bullets run out when the story needs them to.


Now let me talk about Lance. When he ends up is this school that happens to be run by a group of students that torture people who enter for fun they are trying to be very quiet. So of course he starts messing with a drum. He later almost gets blown up setting off a tripwire. This fucker ends up getting an entire episode dedicated to him escaping a zombie. He fucks his hand up but it later heals with no explanation. He just runs from one zombie the whole episode until a guy saves him and ends up having Lance put a bullet in his head because he got hurt saving his punk ass. Lance had no character development. Almost no one did! Except in terms of magically using weapons greatly after previously having no experience.


This season ends and I laughed. But it was an angry laugh. Like finishing a drink and finding a fly at the bottom. The zombies are fast as hell. Head shots kill them but even after seeing this as a fact dozens of time they continue to shot them ten times before hitting their heads. The camera shit bugged me because when zombies were on screen chasing folks it was shaky as hell and when people were just having conversations...long...long...long conversations there was a handheld. A camera that is unsteady does not make a conversation more interesting. This show is a prequel to a show I have never watched and sure as hell don't plan to later this. I have watched a lot of zombie things and this ranks at the bottom. Resident Evil Retribution, Brain Dead, Bio Zombie, Warm Bodies, World War Z, Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, Maggie, The Girl With All The Gifts, Train To Busan, Life After Beth, The Night Eats The World, and Santa Clarita Diet are all better than this shit.

Jaime King as Rose
Justin Chu Cary as “Spears”
Christine Lee as Ooh “Sun” Kyungsun
Sal Velez Jr. as William Velez
Kelsey Flower as Lance
Gwynyth Walsh as Barbara Watson

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