Dead Trigger

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One particular video game movie that floats under the radar, and rightfully so, is the zombie survival team-up flick of 'Dead Trigger'; a movie based on a mobile game of the same name where the player goes through upgrading this and that, playing story missions etc. and progressing things over time. It's a relatively common type of game, but I have a couple of other mobile titles that act like that, which I'd far rather play. However, that's not to suggest the game is bad, i'm just altogether unfamiliar.

In the game, a plague from an unknown source kills billions and transforms others into hideous creatures. The remainders of humanity desperately try to survive the outbreak, while a man named Julian Lassagne creates a colony called the New Hope. He leads this group of survivors, and you play as the protagonist, Kyle, who joins them in the fight. So, once again, we have here a case of the movie taking some liberties, as about the only thing that remains the same is the protagonists name, Kyle.

In the movie, a team of misfits are recruited by the government to fight against the zombie outbreak. Led by soldiers Rockstock (Isaiah Washington) and Kyle Walker (Dolph Lundgren), the team consists of #121212, Chris Norton (Chris Galya), a homeless wanderer; #081274, Samantha Atkins (Luciana Carro), a fighter after a clean record; #021309, Daniel Chen (Justin Chon), a gamer with a zombie bodycount on the mind, his mother being killed by them; #081672, Gerald "G-Dawg" Jefferson (Romeo Miller), a petty thief with a sick mother; and #092613, Naomi Shika (Natali Yura), a girl who seemingly lost her family in the outbreak, and a couple more who end up being rather obviously expendable.

The team must then fight their way through the most mild zombie outbreak you've ever seen in order to locate and retrieve a team of scientists who may very well be sitting on the cure. The plot sounds somewhat average, but truth be told, a lot of it is below average to dumb. There's so much of it that makes absolutely no sense, like various things still going throughout the outbreak. When one thinks about how Covid has effected the world and businesses, it's absolutely ridiculous to imagine that life could go on in certain ways during a zombie outbreak. These zombies are creatures I almost feel sorry for.

When you take 'The Walking Dead', as things progress, zombies become a bit more of a background thing, and not as much of a terrifying threat as they once were. They go from flesh-eating nightmare fuel cannibals to pretty much wild dogs, as we see humanity becoming the real monsters. Now try to imagine this zombie outbreak being contained to how characters see zombies in the last parts of the show. Really, the idea of getting a bunch of misfits to fight in the zombie apocalypse is laughable - but then when you look at these zombies, they're a joke, and indeed, a lot of the deaths here are totally laughable.
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However, things aren't quite laughable enough to make this a movie that's so bad it's good. As the movie unfolds, a lot of it is just wondering how they came up with such oddball concepts. Having never played the game, I really don't know about any accuracies. But one thing I do know is that Dead Trigger is a mobile game, and it really does beg the question of whether or not they've run out of ideas. Yes, there's 'Angry Birds', but that was also incredibly trendy. Everyone and their mother knows that title, even if they haven't played it. 'Dead Trigger', however, seems very under the radar (or I've been under a rock), but any way you look at it, it's definitely a strange go-to for a zombie apocalypse movie. Trust me when I say this one ranks near the bottom for both zombie and video game movies.

​1/5

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