Dead Moon Rising (2008)
Studio: Anubis Digital Studios
DVD Release Date:March 4, 2008
Directed By: Mark E. Poole
Cast: Jason Crowe, Erica Goldsmith, Mike Seely
Review By: Brian McNail

For the love of God, low budget horror movies are going to be the death of me.

Dead Moon Rising is by far one of the worst filmed, acted, special effects-enhanced movies I have seen in a LONG time. This movie appears to be shot on a Sony Handicam, is shaky as hell, and I do believe it was not done on purpose, a la Cloverfield, Blair Witch Project, or most porn. This movie does not deserve a review, as I do not w ish to even remember a second of it. It is not worth my time, nor is it worth your time to rent it.
I have, however, decided to give this a full review so that maybe an aspiring film writer who reads reviews here at Brutal as Hell can get an idea of what NOT to do. The plot of the film revolves around three slackers at a local car rental company that do not realize the world is being invaded by zombies until the zombies hit their town of Louisville, Kentucky. The three are average movie character stereotypes. Since they only say the characters’ names once in the flick, and I will be damned if I’m going to go back and what to find out these morons’ names, I will for the remainder of the review refer to them as:

1. Cranky old guy that hates everyone; especially the Want-To-Be
2. The Want-To-Be: This guy wants to be a Vegetarian, Manager in Training, and EVERYTHING must be done by the book (personally, I think that is where his lines are kept as he doesn’t speak unless he has the book in his hand or is off camera).
3. The Main Character/Narrator /Douche bag: Guy that keeps the plot going with crappy one-liners and endless back-story after back story anecdotes.

I know this is a very weak-sounding explanation of the plot, but the movie is so hard to follow. It is just characters running from scene to scene, getting in zombie fights, people dying, and then the survivors run off to another area with a bunch of flash back scenes thrown in. This is typical in almost any low budget horror flick, but this movie just does it really badly.

Anyway, our plot circles around our merry little morons as they run around (until Want-To-Be dies) the Louisville area, being chased by zombies, picking up people left and right, and stealing scenes directly from other zombie movies, and cut scenes from several different first/third person shooter video games. It seemed that extras were in no short demand as this movie is predictable in the fact that if they meet a new group of people, the old group is doomed – this movie gains characters as fast as they lose them. A lot of the action is mainly beat down splatters, which is explained by our hero who refuses to use a gun, since when he was a child he shot a girl at a birthday party. This is really strange since the poster for the flick displays him with a Gatling gun! The only real guns used in the flick are by the police officer and the Cranky Old Guy who never seem to reload or run out of bullets.

This is a garbage flick that has ZERO saving grace. If you find yourself with a choice between watching Dead Moon Rising or getting laser eye surgery in a moving dune buggy, go with the second option. This movie just tries too hard to be funny, scary, and ironic. In internet lingo this equates to EPIC FAIL. Now if you will excuse me, I’m off to burn a DVD, and I don’t mean copy one.