Considering the amount of quirky laughs found in Anthony C. Ferrante's feature film directorial debut, the flawed but at times somewhat scary ghost story Boo/Scream and Run (2005), it really is not all that difficult to comprehend his evolution into a contemporary auteur of intentionally "bad" but entertaining TV "horror" comedies like those of his Sharknado series (Sharknado [2013 / trailer], Sharknado 2: The Second One [2014 / trailer], Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! [2015 / trailer], Sharknado 4: The 4th Awakens [2016 / trailer], Sharknado 5: Global Swarming [2017 / trailer] and The Last Sharknado: It's About Time [2018 / trailer]).
With that mostly entertaining and harebrained franchise pretty much flogged deader than the bleached bones of a decade-dead horse by the time it ended, for his first follow-up genre film, Ferrante turned his attention away from what might be today's second most popular horror "monster" (killer sharks) to today's most popular genre monster: the flesh-eating zombie. But as perhaps to be expected, he decided to once again lean towards the cheesy and ridiculous — as evident by the TV movie's eye-catching title, Zombie Tidal Wave: The Swimming Dead. Unexpectedly enough, however, despite the cheesy title and the more than occasional intentional laugh the movie induces, Ferrante's movie is often played more straight than deadpan.
Trailer to
Zombie Tidal Wave:
Considering that Zombie Tidal Wave is set amidst the coastal beauty of Krabi, Thailand, it is almost a bit surprising that Ferrante didn't manage to get a bigger name star* to join the project than his regular, somewhat thespian-challenged but pleasantly DILFy lead actor Ian Ziering (of all the Sharknado flicks & other fine stuff like Tyrannosaurus Azteca [2007 / full movie]); the former husband of Playboy Playmate (Sept 1997) Nikki "Generic Blonde" Ziering (seen below).
But as Ferrante films are not meant to be Academy contenders, Ziering's thespian skills are more than good enough for his character Hunter Shaw, a manly boatsman ready to leave paradise in manly pursuit of maintaining his manly freedom. (He, of course, goes through enough character development over the course of the film to realize, at the end, that love and family is worth more than manly freedom.) Ziering, in any event, is never overshadowed or upstaged by any of his co-stars, all of whom treat the filmic material with aplomb equal to his.
* See, for example, the paid-vacation films Croc (2007) and/or Amphibious 3D (2010). But in all likelihood, within the US of Abnormality itself, and unlike in Old Europe, Ziering is probably a "bigger" name than either Michael Madsen or Michael Paré.
Zombie Tsunami might have been a better title, alliteration-wise, but Zombie Tidal Wave could well be a small nod to a much earlier cult film that also features undead rising from tropic waters, Shock Waves (1977). Director Ferrante, who has among his earliest film credits a brief appearance in the less-than-laudable zombie movie The Dead Hate the Living! (2000), fills ZTW with an occasional nod to that and other "classics" of the genre (a music group appears named The Fulcis, after the director of Zombie [1979], for example, and elsewhere there is a boat propeller scene that easily trumps the scene it refers to in Zombie Holocaust a.k.a. Dr Butcher MD [1980]) that it is almost a surprise that he didn't manage to have a character say something along the lines of "They're coming to get you, [Name of Choice]."
But for whatever allusions might be found in ZTW to earlier movies, and despite the movie's ridiculous title and basic premise, the flashes of camp and the occasional off-the-wall idea or ironic scene, as already mentioned, much of the movie plays out pretty much like a serious zombie flick. The result is a slightly schizophrenic zombie movie that is in no way a highpoint of the genre but that will more than satisfy the average zombie-flick fan, particularly since ZTW is surprisingly gory for a contemporary genre film, television or not. (That said, ZTW is surprisingly gory primarily when the scene involves the blue-skinned and blue-blooded zombies and not the red-blooded, turned-by-bite zombies; particularly the latter rely on bad CGI.)
A tight film that doesn't waste much time on anything extraneous, once the paradisaical setting is set an earthquake promptly rips a crack in the ocean's floor, releasing the first of the long-submerged, blue-skinned zombies. While in Shock Waves, the select zombies from the sunken ship inhabiting the waters were the product of NS experimentation in producing perfect soldiers, the untold numbers* released from the sunken ship in ZTW are the product of Big Pharma experimentation in creating... something. They breaststroke into the coastal town of Emrys Bay, and before you know what has happened, everyone but the film's steadily shrinking core group of survivors seems to have turned. The little plot the film has concerns how the groups or individuals separate and re-gather, survive or die, and, ultimately, put an end to the zombie outbreak of zombies that are unable to decide whether they should shamble or run but want flesh more than brains.**
* Throughout the film and in any given scene, the numbers of the blue and/or bitten dead change indiscriminately. The tidal waves, for examples, are dotted with thousands of swimming dead, but the numbers on shore hardly reach the hundreds. And later, during the wood-chipper scene, the huge mass that breaks through the gates is inexplicably reduced to less than a half dozen that easily get tossed in the machine.
** Ever notice, though, how zombies seldom ever actually finish a single meal in any zombie film? Here, too, they tend to eat a bite or two before pursuing their next mouthful of fresh meat.
On the whole, ZTW offers few surprises but some good fun one-liners, a lot of mostly poor CGI effects and some decent practical ones, and some dumb and fun ideas. (Ever see a drummer fighting off zombies with drumsticks? He doesn't do it for long.) The mandatory opening scene revealing that zombies are out and about and underwater, featuring a marriage proposal never completed, is cookie-cut but handled better than, say, the virtually identical but zombieless scene in Amphibious 3-D. The big surprise of the flick is the first of the "good guys" that gets bitten and subsequently becomes one mean, near unstoppable zombie... those who subsequently do or don't die and turn is less surprising. The dick of the film, a self-righteous rich guy named Blaine (Lincoln Bevers), offers one of the best scenes by proving that his future bride Connie (Natasha Hardegen of Appetite for Sin [2022 / trailer] and The Envy of Everyone [2022/ trailer]) is replaceable.
Zombie Tidal Wave: a fun one for non-demanding zombie fans and those who like contemporary intentionally "bad" film. Two partially eaten thumbs up!
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