Review by David Rupp
Every once in a while, out of nowhere, a movie comes along and by sheer force of storytelling blows away the populace. This is not that movie. Hyped to death and presented as "One of the best zombie films in decades", this falls short of the hype by leaps and bounds. I'm not one to dump all over a movie just because I can, in fact I try to find the good in everything. But I can't rave on this, one more tired take on a over used sub-genre, and that is saying something as I am a huge zombie movie fan. Not that this movie is comepletely horrible, it for one just doesn't match the hoopla that preceeded it, secondly houses just about every horror stereotype, mashed into one movie, and tries to pass it seriously. And of course my personal pet peeve: fast zombies.
Written and directed by Steven Miller and starring Garrett Jones, Juliet Reeves, William Howard Bowman, Rowan Bousaid and Ashley Elizabeth Pierce. Automaton Transfusion was released direct to DVD by Dimension Extreme, who brought you that fun movie Black Sheep. The whole premise of the story is one retold a million times, government biological experiment to use the dead as soldiers. Experiment goes wrong, population of a small town is immersed in a nightmare of swarming hungry animated dead.
The shots were filmed quite nicley, and the practical effects were not bad at all either, some saving graces for the overloaded storylines and overacting. The promotional blurb of "one of the best zombie movies in decades" is a bit strong, what about Planet Terror or Shaun of the Dead, just to spin two off the top of my head. Anyway this is an ok film, just not great. If you have some friends over on a Friday night and have some beers, go on and throw it in, but I reccomend you rent not buy.