Bridge of the Doomed

The movie tries really, really hard. I give it an A for effort. Unfortunately it just never really comes together. It's hit an interesting concept. A squad of soldiers must hold a bridge during a zombie outbreak. The zombies aren't their only problem. There's also a demonic creature that lives under the bridge that also proves to be a lethal. The movie delivers plenty of action. There are numerous battles between the soldiers and the zombies. There's also a film is also suitably gory. The acting is mediocre to bad, but I can get past that in a movie like this. Ultimately the movie lacks focus. There are several confrontations between the soldiers and a refugee camp in the woods nearby that never really go anywhere. Then there's the beast under the bridge. It's a completely unnecessary addition that never fully develops either.

Overall the movie is a decent watch for zombie fans. We've seen a lot better but we've seen much, much worse.

Su doesn't wait until the opening credits are over before launching his first zombie attack, and they're consistently red in tooth and claw throughout. This is a B movie, sure, but Bridge of the Doomed fits neatly into the world of Max Brooks and World War Z, updating World War II scenarios to the zombie apocalypse. And this IS a creature feature, because there's something way worse than zombies under that bridge, and it's a proper old-school monster like the one in Michael Mann's The Keep. While this Mahal Empire production doesn't have the expensive studio sheen of ventures like the Dawn of the Dead remake, it's a busy, energetic combat movie that doesn't put many booted feet wrong. And yes, although his character is largely off-screen, Paré comes in swinging with LaSardo for the climax, barrelling in like he's Burt Lancaster and leaving this critic one satisfied customer.

Right, well as I sat down to watch the 2022 action horror movie "Bridge of the Doomed", it was because it was a zombie movie that I hadn't already seen. Needless to say that with it being a zombie movie, then there was no doubt about me watching it, as I am a sucker for all things zombie.

Now, I have to say that I wasn't really harboring much of any high hopes for "Bridge of the Doomed", as the movie's cover/poster looked fairly dubious, and also the fact that the movie had Michael Paré and Robert LaSardo in the leading roles, weren't exactly highly functional bait to lure in the audience.

But still, I opted to give director Michael Su's movie a fair chance.

And I will say that "Bridge of the Doomed" was watchable. Sure, it was a very, very generic zombie movie, but there was something slightly enjoyable about the simplicity of the storyline and the lack of a greater motivation to drive the movie. Keep in mind that you're not in for a grand cinematic experience of zombie cinema when you sit down to watch "Bridge of the Doomed".

The acting performances in "Bridge of the Doomed" were as to be expected for a cast ensemble such as it was. Again, you're not in for a grand cinematic experience in that department either.

With "Bridge of the Doomed" being a zombie movie, then you essentially sit down to watch great special effects and gory make-up effects, right? Right! Well, while there is an abundance of zombies in the movie, the special effects are low budget; some of them so very low budget that they opted for that zombie make-up where they slap grey and green body paint and some latex prostethetics in the face, and forget all about coloring the areas around and near the ears and the neck down. It looks so stupid, and it just makes a zombie movie slip down on the ladder in terms of being enjoyable. Heck, I even saw a zombie where they had painted the back of the hands gray, but left the palm and up to halfway on the fingers without the paint. So yeah, the zombie make-up in "Bridge of the Doomed" is bad, but at least they tried.

If you enjoy zombie movies, especially the low budget ones, then you will probably find some kind of enjoyment in watching "Bridge of the Doomed". But if you prefer a zombie movie with a proper budget, proper practical and CGI effects, proper storyline, etc. Then "Bridge of the Doomed" is not the best of choices.

My rating of "Bridge of the Doomed" lands on a generous four out of ten stars, based mostly on the amount of action and number of zombies in the movie.

Lured in by a psychotronic-sounding title, I sat down for this low-budget effort and immediately got pulled up short. Now, I'm not naive enough to expect filet mignon efforts on a potted meat budget, but I did expect to have a reasonably good time without too many rough edges and seams showing to distract me from the movie. Not so. The first clue that this movie was going to be a mess was the fact that it's list of executive producers was probably longer than the cast and crew COMBINED.

Really. I lost count after 60. The movie was produced by Mahal Brothers Productions, which apparently relies heavily on crowdfunding and isn't above using the bigger donors to fill out minor roles or as extras. So, you have professional actors like Michael Paré delivering the goods next to overweight crowd funders delivering lines with all the subtle nuance of particleboard. In any other venue, this talent disparity would be fine (high school or community theater production), but in a mainstream film I do expect a modicum of professionalism; there's a big difference between a professional actor who can't act vs. A non-actor who has been shoehorned in because they contributed a few grand to the film's budget. I'm a firm believer in the old maxim about lots of cooks and broth, so I can't help but wonder what other machinations these execs did to make the movie worse than it was. A zombie apocalypse of unspecified origins is the reason we have a group of soldiers going to secure and/or destroy a key bridge. That's after we get almost 30 minutes of scenes of people belching out exposition or being massacred by zombies, little of which has to do with the bridge. Once we get to the bridge, things get marginally better, with an unspecified monster underneath that begins dispatching the soldiers. For some reason, the zombies have gotten out of the cities and are stumbling around this rural landscape, so they're a threat as well. Add in a hostile group of survivors, John Birch types who wouldn't like authority figures like army personnel anyways, and you should have enough conflict to generate interest, right? Nuh uh. This movie somehow manages to be boring even with all these factors. I have to wonder if this movie was some sort of tax write off, or simply created to fill the world with product. It's utter lack of entertainment seems to point to this.

The script is rough, like no one other than the writer looked at it before they started filming. The dialog is cluncky, and much of it is pointless.

The zombie makup is decent, whoever did the SFX did a good job with the mackup and gore. The music is generic but pretty good. Where ever the movie was films was picturesque.

As a veteran, watching these types of movies is just painful. Would be so difficult to have had a military consultant on set to show you how soldiers Actually behave? The weapons dicipline is pathetic, these idiots cluster up like a JV soccer team, they maintain No type of security, they keep letting people watder off by themselves, and they all act like a bunch of college fraternity bros. Soldiers do not act like this. Stop making movies like this.