Hood of the Living Dead

USA • 2005 • 86m •

• Directed by: Eduardo Quiroz, Jose Quiroz. • Starring: Chris Angelo, Jaysun Barr, Johanna Christensen, Al Daniels, Brandon Daniels, Ben Juhl, Daniel Landeros, James M. Logan, Raul Martinez, Rachel Petersen, Eduardo Quiroz, Raymond Rodriguez, Jose Rosete..

Ricky is a promising young scientist whose experimental formula regenerates dying cells. Ever since his parents died, Ricky's been trying hard to balance work while taking care of his younger brother Jermaine. When Jermaine is killed in a violent drive-by shooting, Ricky does the unthinkable to bring him back to life. His brother is now a blood-thirsty zombie wreaking carnage all over the hood. Now it's up to Ricky's colleague Scott and the boys in the hood to stop Jermaine from killing and turning the entire hood into zombies.

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Review:

Image from: Hood of the Living Dead (2005)

I happened to spot this flick on the shelf under "new releases" and found the idea of a hip-hop zombie flick far too interesting to pass up. That's how it was billed on the box, anyhow, and I thought to myself, "What a great idea!" Plus there's a "Welcome to Oakland" sign on the cover, too. How could I resist? Unfortunately, the hip-hop part only lasted for as long as the opening theme. Neither hip-hop music nor hip-hop culture had much of a role in the movie. Having lived in Oakland myself, I know that there are many aspiring hip-hop artists there, so the low budget of this flick was no excuse not to have a fitting soundtrack. Any number of struggling artists would have jumped on the opportunity to contribute to this flick. Why the Quiroz Brothers didn't take advantage of this is beyond me.

Once the film got rolling, it was a completely typical zombie movie with a cast that just so happened to be completely black and Latino. You might think that this would put an unusual slant on the movie... but it didn't. Somehow, the Quiroz Brothers vision of "urban culture" boils down to drive-by shootings and dropping an F-bomb in every line in the movie. The rapid-fire use of the word "fuck" is probably this movie's most distinguishing characteristics; there were single lines that contained the word three or four times, and no line didn't contain it at least once. I'm not at all squeamish about swearing in a movie, but the feeling here was that it was the result of a lack of ideas on the part of the writers (also the Quiroz Brothers), and the script was generally very poor.

The film was generally a disappointment. It would have been interesting to see a genuinely "urban culture" zombie flick, but "Hood of the Living Dead" doesn't deliver on that count. The characters in the movie could just as easily have been white or eskimo or anything else. There was no distinct flavor to the movie. It's just another run-of-the-mill low budget flick with bad acting, lousy writing, amateurish direction, bland cinematography, a cheap soundtrack, and nothing at all to recommend it.

Review by w00f from the Internet Movie Database.

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