To call Dead Rising a shallow experiment in videogaming is a gross understatement of the facts. Though I never got tired of staving off a mob of flesh eating ghouls with a Flying V guitar or blinding zombies with hilariously oversized masks, there just wasn’t too much to the game. It did keep me coming back for more, though. There was so much to do, so many hilarious stunts to be pulled off at the expense of an endless supply of zombies and so much unlockable shit that by the time I traded the game in on whatever I happened to be buying next, I still don’t think I had seen even so much as 75% of the entire game. It was fun, it was interesting but if there’s one game in the world that doesn’t really need a feature film adaptation, it’s Dead Rising.
However, Capcom, Dead Rising’s publisher, respectfully disagrees and had commissioned a feature to be made. The end result, evident in this 90 second trailer, is not terribly exciting and looks like just about every other low budget shot-on-video zombie feature to come out of Japan in the last ten years or so. I don’t speak the language, so I can’t say what’s going on here but it looks nothing like the original game and may have more in common with the still unreleased Dead Rising 2. What more do you need to know, though? Zombies start eating people. Survivors clamor for shelter in a mall or a warehouse. Inevitably, they are forced to stave off waves of zombies. Herein, a wheelchair is outfitted with weapons, including a chainsaw. People are bitten. Zombies are mutilated. In the trailer, the letters FPS can be seen and some footage is first person perspective shots of navigating a warehouse, so one can only assume that there’s some kind of clever video game to film translation happening there. Dead Rising, the movie, may wind up being a lot of fun as it seems to share some common elements with the Hong Kong feature, Bio-Zombie, itself an homage to video games, but beyond that, it’s not much to look at.
I have no idea when this is being released but word has it that it’s going straight to video, will be released on the web and Xbox 360 owners will have the chance to download it, no doubt only if they’re in Japan, so set up a Japanese Live account if you absolutely need to see it.
January 30, 2010 12:57 pm
Bryan, just to point out a little detail… if you pause it on the black screen it says it’s based on the video game “Dead Rising 2″. (In English.)
Zombrex Dead Rising Sun (Shibyō Osen Dead Rising) appears to be a footnote in the contracts for Dead Rising 2. After the success of the first game, when they hired the game’s producer (Mr Megaman, Keiji Inafune) there was talk of doing a film based on the series and he decided that he wanted to give directing a try so he put that in to the contract.
So as far as the ‘film’ they basically threw a little money his way ( he didn’t really define anything besides he gets to direct and they would release it on the contract ) so when I say little I mean kraft services was a case of ramen in the corner and when I say they release it you’re right to the strait to 360 release… though if there is a penny to be made… you can bet your ass Capcom will get in DVD eventually… ( I mean hell how many versions of street fighter 2 do you remember owning ).
So this is a video game producer making a movie… more then a film producer making a movie based on a video game… and that alone has me interested in it… because to date I don’t know of any video game movies which were so intimately the project of the game’s producer himself.
It should be noted that the last time Inafune and his team pushed Capcom to let them do their own thing with little budget and largely on their own time resulted in Megaman 2… which I know is a video game… but hell I’m inclined to give him a go. Hell at worst he gives us a fun b-movie with a lot of crazy outrageous weapons and at best we get to see how the video game team would fair in directing, producing, etc at making a b-movie.