The Vanguard (2008) User Reviews

The Storyline Is Better than the Film

[claudio_carvalho · 3/10 · 5 November 2011]

In 2015, the world is a chaos. The last known oil fields have been lost to global war, over-population has reached critical levels, food and water is scarce. Anarchy prevails. Mankind is in the verge of a new Dark Age.

During the upheaval, one Corporation has emerged to become more powerful than any government. Its base of operations is a fortified city known as the Red Zone. As the outside world burns, the Corporation implements a depopulation program to cull the human race.

The scientists tasked with the heinous act revolt. The drug they are instructed to develop should pacify and then slowly kill; but instead, the scientists turn mankind into something beyond their worst fears. Out of the darkness a new species has arisen. They are dominant and savage and their number far exceeds what remains of mankind. For the few survivors lost to the wilderness, they are known only as Biosyns.

The lonely Max Carter (Ray Bullock Jr.) survives wandering through the devastated world waiting for Hareem Jabbar (Bahi Ghubril), a man supposed to rescue him. He stumbles in the wilderness with the deserter Jamal (Shiv Grewal) that was tracking him and Jamal believes that he is the antidote for the plague. Then they meet with the scientist Rachael (Emma Choy) and her mate Zac (Steve Weston) and after many problems they walk together to the South escaping from the Corporation and the Biosyns in a dangerous journey.

"The Vanguard" is a low-budget film with a reasonable storyline but poorly executed. The acting is good, but the film seems to be a weak pilot of a TV series, excessively talkative and going nowhere. With a better screenplay, direction, locations and budget, "The Vanguard" could be a reasonable movie. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Vanguarda" ("Vanguard")

The End of the World as we don't Want to Know it!

[Coventry · 3/10 · 7 April 2008]

I really, really, REALLY wanted to like this brand new and ambitious Sci-Fi/horror hybrid, especially because it blends some of my favorite genre themes (life after the apocalypse, scientific experiments gone wrong…) with a free-spirited and low-budget approach of the film-making business. This genre certainly isn't dead and buried yet, and young directors are able to prove it as long as they just got a couple of great inventive story ideas and the talent to create an atmosphere of damnation without financial means. Matthew Hope, writer and director of "The Vanguard", surely has a vague idea of all these fundamental requirements, but not yet enough capacities to deliver a memorable movie. "The Vanguard" sadly ends up being a mishmash of semi-processed topics and improperly explained sub plots. Hope's screenplay is full of contradictions that invoke confusing and a total disbelief regarding all the post-apocalyptic events depicted on screen. Supposedly the entire planet became nearly uninhabitable after WWIII, yet everything takes place in peaceful forests and flourishing meadows. The world also supposedly suffers from overpopulation, yet everything looks forsaken. Monkey-type zombies supposedly threaten the last remaining survivors, yet they're as good as blind and can easily be defeated by a simply smash on the head. How are you supposed to take the apocalypse seriously when one of the last men on earth drives a bicycle resembling a Harley Davidson, lives in a wooden cage in the forest and battles his zombie opponents with two mini-axes? Max, the silent hero, combines forces with a military guinea pig and a female scientist, but only to aimlessly drift through the woods for the rest of the film. Max' blood is the antidote to cure the infected zombies (referred at as "Biosyns"), but nobody seems to be interested in saving humanity anymore. "The Vanguard" is a seriously frustrating film and comes across as unfinished in practically all departments. The atmosphere of chaos and despair – essential for apocalyptic films – is never truly noticeable, the entire budget for make-up art went to just a few scenes (while the rest of the film is rather tame and bloodless) and the script solves none of the mysteries it created. The majorities of shortcoming can be blamed on a lack of budget, but still there was more than enough potential to accomplish something better than this.

Dodgy attempt at a cash in that looks more like a student film.

[oneguyrambling · 3/10 · 14 November 2010]

Plot: The Earth is overrun by zombie-like people that reacted badly to medicine administered (or something like that, I can't remember and didn't understand at the time either), one guy runs around Versus style chopping heads and mashing zombies, and apparently his blood holds the key to saving humanity, so he and a few other over-actors try to reach safety to fix the world.

Budget: About $8.50.

What was so horribly wrong then Smart-Guy? To start with the zombies ran just like either gorillas from the Planet of the Apes remake, or the crawlers from The Descent, take your pick. They have little or no makeup aside from messy hair and they snarl a bit to appear scary.

They do the whole "run past the Hero so that he can hit you with the hatchet in a theatrical manner". If he didn't hit them they would simply run straight past with no effect. What kind of attack is that? The acting is abysmal, point blank. I am no master of acting talent, but these guys just suck. The plot is a rip of several other better films, only this movie looks like a student film.

Final Rating – 3.5 / 10. Redefines low budget crap.

If you liked this review (or even if you didn't) check out oneguyrambling.com

Mad previous comment by Malvolio-5

[indesec · 1/10 · 20 September 2008]

Before I add my comments, please read below and see how the first person to review this film felt about it.

Author: malvolio-5 I saw a preview of this and it is without a doubt one of the most spectacularly invigorating and exciting movies I've had the pleasure of seeing in years! It has cult classic written all over it! It's an unashamedly violent, rough, gory, terrifying thrill-ride. With bold, exciting direction and some of the scariest most menacingly dynamic "zombies" ever committed to celluloid, this makes 28 Days Later and I Am Legend look like The Teletubbies. The lead protagonist, Max, sets a new template for proper, masculine heroes that have been sorely lacking from Hollywood movies since the '70s, and I guarantee his "look" is set to become truly iconic. Do yourself a favour and seek this movie out! It simply kicks ass!.

OK, Now my comments.

I have no vested interest in this film, and my comments I think will be endorsed by far more people than will say "they are rubbish" The storyline has been used a hundred times before, and often far better. The cinematography, which completely over-uses filters, is dreadful, The Cameraman either has Parkinsons disease, or was drunk. The main actor, if he is to become Iconic!, will have to find another way, because this isn't it. (People with Parkinsons disease, that was not meant to make fun of your condition.) I don't often comment on movies, but I do try to take the things written about the movie seriously, hoping to make an informed judgement whether to watch or not, but after reading the comments above, well, I just had to write.

I love Science fiction, it is without a doubt my favourite genre, and will often find some good in bad films, but this is dire.

When I read the above review, I wanted to believe it, but come on, either the guy is heavily involved with the film, or he his just having a laugh.

People will still watch it no matter what is said, and thats great we all have a choice, in fact I encourage you to watch it, simply to show that my comments are honest and truthful, unlike some.

I myself am English, this is a British film, and I wanted to so much show the world yet again that we can produce good quality work on a limited budget, and we can, but not with this.

Trust me the film is bad, way too bad to be released, but it will, and you will watch, and? well hopefully you will comment, and your comments will be heard, preventing anything as awful as this ever being shown again, but then again I'm an optimist, well for 90 minutes I wasn't, but am recovering now.

missed chance

[hammer46_ · 3/10 · 9 April 2008]

I've seen The Vanguard at the BIFFF in Brussels. A got drawn by the Poster 'refreshing, will leave you craving for more' Yeah Right. This film is extremely low budget (there's nothing wrong with low budget films if they're well made, but this one obviously is not) and has the look and feel of a student's project. The idea is OK, but the horror in this is totally absent. THere's no gore either. The one scene where blood splatters out of a guy's chest, it's so fake it's not even funny. The plot is full of holes and doesn't work up to a climax. There's only a flat line. The zombies are unconvincing and confused: do they attack you always, or just when they feel like it? The playground is a field and a couple of hundred square meters of wood. The characters only run around in the wood and go nowhere (just like the plot). This film is a total waste of your precious and expensive time. If you want to see zombies, go see Romero's latest: Diary of the Dead, at least that one is well executed.

awful, awful, awful film

[wookied · 1/10 · 16 October 2008]

OK, I was looking through the DVD's in my local supermarket and 'The Vanguard' caught my eye. So I pick it up, turn it over and read the sleeve. Think to myself: hey, this sounds like it might be a good film.... oh my god!!! I could not be more wrong. In my opinion this film is the biggest pile of steaming boring dull dull dull crap I have ever seen, and I've seen some real crap films. It appears to be a very low budget film, and even though there's nothing wrong with that, it just adds to the cheap mind numbing feel of this movie. If I could, I wouldn't of even rated this movie with the score of 1 - it really is that awful. By all means, make your own mind up, but I seriously advise all to avoid this dross at all costs....you have been warned x

A great character lost in a confused film

[jaym · 4/10 · 1 October 2008]

I really wanted to like this film- zombies and post-apocalyptic scenarios are precisely what I want to see on screen. It started out well. I liked Max- even his hand axes and chopper bike. The initial combat scenes were well put together, Max has a forceful and direct fighting style and Ray Bullock Jr delivers a tremendous physical performance. He could have carried the whole thing on his own. In fact, this could have been a terrific film even with its limited budget.

However, as the film progressed the plot meandered and lost focus. It seemed to me that the writer was more concerned about making a political point (something along the lines of the evil Corporation inventing the threat of jihadist violence to keep the people at home distracted) than in actually creating a coherent story. Essentially it boils down to this- the evil Corp. wants to cull humanity but the scientists tasked with doing so have a change of heart and instead deliver a drug which turns people into savage, mindlessly killing zombies.

I still haven't figured out how that is supposed to make sense.

To add to the mix we have a rogue soldier who wants Max for his own mysterious goal, an escaping scientist who is trying to reach the resistance, an Arab figure sent to find Max from halfway around the world for some reason and the usual "evolving zombies" stuff. None of it ever comes to fruition after a lengthy journey. It's as if they just forgot about all of the plot lines they'd created. It's frustrating that all of it is dumped- it seems like an utter waste of the entire middle section of the film. Instead of an actual ending to the story the film concludes by having the zombies and the lead acting completely out of character.

And that makes even less sense than the "we don't want to kill people so we'll change them into mass-murdering zombies instead".

It's a real shame because the Max character deserves a much better film than this one.

Awful!

[runara94 · 1/10 · 4 November 2009]

What more is there to say..? This film sucks! Everything is bad; the acting, directing, the filming and the effects. The DVD-cover was attracting, but the film was rubbish!

A friend of mine bought the film for 4 dollars, and we thought that this would be THAT good film because of the cover, as I mentioned earlier. It started as a pretty bad film, and transformed into something more worse as the time went. So, after watching it, I will not hesitate to put it on the list of the worst films I have seen in my life. And for those who say that it could have been worse: It could not have been worse!

Avoid The Vanguard.

[BA_Harrison · 2/10 · 10 June 2012]

I'm all for people trying something different with the zombie/infected movie, UNLESS it's at the expense of all that is enjoyable about the genre. The Vanguard attempts a vaguely art-house approach, with a contemplative mood, introspective narrative, a degree of quirkiness, and an attempt at social commentary about racism, but offers none of the stuff that usually makes these kind of films fun: gore, excitement, scares, and more gore.

The Vanguard does have a couple of good basic ideas: they're the same ones used for I Am Legend and 28 Days Later, only here they are completely wasted by film-makers with no idea how to turn them into an entertaining movie. The acting is mediocre, the action is dull, the splatter is restricted to some arterial spray (some of it crap CGI), the characters are irritating, and the 'zombies' are very disappointing, loping along like apes, growling like lions, and sporting naff zebra stripes drawn on with face-paint (I realise they're supposed to be like animals, but this is too silly for words).

Somehow, this film garnered some decent comments from Fangoria and Gorezone (who are proudly quoted on the DVD cover), and was selected for the Dead by Dawn horror festival; I'm not quite sure how that happened, but take it from me (and the majority here on IMDb who have voiced their opinion)—The Vanguard sucks, even rivalling The Zombie Diaries for the title of worst British zombie film.

Mediocre Horror movie

[twhint · 3/10 · 14 July 2009]

The movie had the tired premise of a world gone mad because of a viral agent, a la Resident Evil/28 * later. The low budget gave the film a visceral feel that was ultimately letdown by the mediocrity of the rest of it, ie. poor effects, rambling plot, poor cinematography.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what the movie was trying to convey other than that people came, they saw, they fought a little, then most died. I suppose it sets up a back story for a sequel or something. The movie is filled with inconsistencies and plot holes that defy imagination. At the end, they revealed a plot twist that made it somewhat interesting, but again, turned the previous two hours into a 'why' session. Why doesn't it make sense? Why did I just waste 2 hours on this pile of crap? Why does anyone think this movie is good in any sense of the word? Why do some think it's in anyway original? Resident Evil did the same exact thing, but better.

The acting was alright and the story did have some interesting premises, in that a corporation wanted to cull the Earth's population because of the sudden decrease in oil, ensuring the survival of the 'elite'. It has some hints of behavioral conditioning that it never really explored beyond a few lines of dialogue between the characters, which might have made things more coherent.

Overall, this movie is simply a mediocre attempt at Resident Evil with a male protagonist but it ultimately fails because of the lack of a cohesive plot. They never really explored any of the issues at hand and tried to develop the main character, but ultimately failed by leaving too many unanswered questions.

yeah, it grew on me

[mariantisocial · 8/10 · 15 October 2008]

I actually wound up liking this movie and if i had known it was a zombie movie i'd never have bothered. The scene when Max is rambling down a woodland path on a chopper bicycle nearly made me turn it off but i stuck with it on account of being intrigued, I like max's dystopian dialogue with himself, questions he poses with no answer, nothing was ever explicitly stated and I think that was the best thing about this movie, you decide and I could find a way to make sense of it, there were enough clues. For me max's mother was key, in the flashbacks i got the sense that under the pressure of the corporation she hatched her own master plan - her son. in a world where only the elite or the useful were deemed worthy of survival the mother, who took her own life after creating the virus, loaded it with a bomb, she didn't kill mankind but turned them into savages creating an enemy, she left max not only the antidote and immunity but also a private army to fight back with. natures revenge for the tyranny of what the powerful man had become. I found the script good, the characters unpredictable and real, the premise excellent and overall i think this was a refreshing and original take on a done to death theme. Clearly it doesn't appeal to everyone perhaps by virtue of the fact that it isn't really a horror or gore fest and the plot certainly isn't handed over on a plate. its an intelligent piece of work and you will have to dig down into your own brain for the missing pieces, i found it provoked my thought and would recommend it as a more a work of art rather than a horror flick

A Unique Vision of the Zombie Eschatology

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 8 November 2008]

Eventually, the zombie apocalypse will come. If you've seen enough horror movies, you've seen a few variations of this theme. "The Vanguard" is another where zombies have taken over through an infection and only a lucky few have the antibodies to survive. It's sort of "28 Days Later" meets "Last Man on Earth"... but in the woods.

I watched this one with my friend Seth, who didn't really like it all that much. I liked it more. I'm not saying it's a great film, but it's not worthless either... much better than some of the crud Anchor Bay has been pumping out ("Five Across the Eyes", "Bryan Loves You"). For what appears to be a low budget, the director (Matthew Hope, also the writer) made a great use of the actors and the special effects were done in a way that wasn't insulting to the audience. I prefer classic techniques, but the computer effects here were tolerable.

Some of it may be cheesy. The beginning features a bicycle ride that gives the impression that the film may be silly. Don't let that fool you. Also, the protagonist (Ray Bullock Jr.) may go a bit overboard with the hatchets. But you have to make sure the zombies are really dead. Beyond that, I thought the film was visually stunning, especially the lead actor's appearance -- the beard kept me glued to the screen, and the rain poncho fit well.

Now, is this the best zombie film? No. Best post-apocalyptic film? Probably not. But it's a worthy addition to the various subgenres. I think the director and lead actor need to be commended for this one and I hope they both continue in the world of horror or movies in general. I see great potential in them both.

Absolute Cheese only salvaged by a decent story line

[wynonasbigbrownbeaver · 4/10 · 30 September 2008]

I never heard of this movie until I took the risk of buying this title from the movie store. The movie wound up operating well within it's tiny budget. This movie would have gotten a higher rating if it was backed up by better special effects. This movie had me shaking my head when in the beginning the main character was rolling down the forest IN HIS BMX bike. (How cool is that, right?) And then...I hear zombie noises that sound like fake synthesizer music. I am thinking to myself, wow. The zombies were bloodless and looked like they were dressing up for a party rather than their decaying deathly looking predecessors that were far more scary. They looked like they pretending to maul each to death out of laughter. Oh well, enough of the bad stuff on this movie. On with the good things about this movie. Camera work wasn't as subpar with the special effects. The footage and the editing was clean. Listening to each character tell their story and the character development was actually intriguing. Overall, this is just another DVD on my shelf that gonna collect some dust for a while. 4/10

Check out the toy helicopter. Wait, for that u have to go thru this surrealistic torture film n pls dont buy the low budget excuse.

[Fella_shibby · 1/10 · 19 September 2016]

I first saw this in 2008 on a dvd which I own. I dont want to throw away the dvd. Mayb after 50 years, this film will be in the journals regarding atrocious films n the print might get lost. Jokes apart, this aint no movie man, jus a zero budget time waster. Read some very positive reviews on the dvd cover. Even the poster looked cool of the guy with an axe. Hav learnt a lesson. Never believe the reviews on the dvd cover. The biggest mistake i did was that i jus bought the dvd without checking the prolific reviews on IMDb. There was no zombie action, jus a guy running..... that too in a fake forest. Was it a field or park? The helicopter man. What can i say! It was a toy helicopter made to fly n then shot as a video.

one of the worst attempts to make a horror film

[jasonhall78727 · 1/10 · 22 April 2010]

from the start of the film you think it may have something to it, but when you find out that the history of the world going bad is from oil running out.... Really. that is what causes "the company" to turn on "us" super weak. Film tricks that have been over used that the next director who tries to use them should never work in film again. The shaky camera, slow motion shots that do not add anything to the effect of what is going on. The nature of the "zombie" people and even the hero don't make any sense at all. I wouldn't give this film a moment more of my time after the first 30 mins. In fact I have never written a review on this site before, but the pure crap that people seem to be putting out needs to stop. I love horror movies, and am a fan of cult films and movies that seem to have some thought behind them. This movie isn't any of the following. The fact that this site placed a glowing review about this movie is also disturbing. How anyone could think that this movie has any merit just shows how the movie was made in the first place. The world is full of stupid people, and I guess this movie was made for them. This movie can't even be considered B rate. I have seen indp films that have more to offer on access cable. What did the producers do with the money they had for the film? snort it up thr nose?

"We here are the Vanguard."

[Backlash007 · 9 November 2008]

~Spoiler~

The Vanguard trailer looked fantastic. It painted a picture of a world overrun by zombies and one man surviving by wielding duel axes and just being a bada$$ in general. The Vanguard the movie does not deliver. It is absolutely a boring mess where NOTHING happens. Not even in the climax does anything happen. I can't even come up with one worthwhile thing to say about it. It has no plot, no action, and only a handful of zombies. What it does have is people walking through the woods. That's it. I urge viewers to not bother wasting your time with this film. It's dreadful.

See It Only If You Have The Time To Kill.

[kazamaru · 2/10 · 22 April 2010]

This Movie Was Bad Hilariously Bad' It Made You Think Something Good Was Going To Happen Only To Leave You Confused And Bewildered In The End. The Main Character Just Spends The Hold Time Running Through The Woods And Killing Off Zombie Ape Like People With Axes' He's Supposedly Deaf But Somewhere Along The Way He All a Of Sudden Starts To Talk And Act as If He Can Hear. This Is Where Everything Gets Ridiculously Bad' All The Time You're Waiting For This Thing To Come To The Plot' Cause All Movies Have Plots Right? Right?? Not This One All You Get Is a Bunch Of Running Shooting Narrative Talking And An Ending So Stupid And Ridiculous It Just Leaves You Staring Blankly At The Screen. My Suggestion Is Do Not Watch This Unless You Have 98.Minutes To Kill' If Not Please Pass This Up And Go Watch 28 Days Later Or Some Of The Much Better Made Apocalypse Zombie Films. It's Obvious Whoever Made This Was Just Trying To Kill Some Time As Well.

If I could only rate this movie with a CERO ( 0 )

[angel_t65 · 1/10 · 5 October 2008]

Because of this guy below I wasted a good 15 minutes:

Author: malvolio-5 I saw a preview of this and it is without a doubt one of the most spectacularly invigorating and exciting movies I've had the pleasure of seeing in years! It has cult classic written all over it! It's an unashamedly violent, rough, gory, terrifying thrill-ride. With bold, exciting direction and some of the scariest most menacingly dynamic "zombies" ever committed to celluloid, this makes 28 Days Later and I Am Legend look like The Teletubbies. The lead protagonist, Max, sets a new template for proper, masculine heroes that have been sorely lacking from Hollywood movies since the '70s, and I guarantee his "look" is set to become truly iconic. Do yourself a favor and seek this movie out! It simply kicks ass!.

One word can be enough to describe this movie AWFUL, I wasted 15 minutes watching this, thanks to malvolio-5 who rated it as a "Cult Classic" and other stuff that I made myself forget. After I woke up and took the DVD out of the player I tossed it in the trash, don't waste your time or money on this movie.

Perfection of crappiness

[arturo-45 · 2/10 · 31 December 2008]

In the course of a year I watch app. 600-700 movies - and compared to most movies "The Vanguard" sucks big time. I really struggled to find a reason for why this movie was even made. I really wish all movie directors would spend more time thinking about what they want to say with their movies - instead of just collecting 90 minutes of worthless film and call it a movie.

There's no plot - and the settings/scenery are unconvincing and the actors should really consider a career change, maybe somewhere in the fastfood or cleaning business - as they have no talent for anything, as this foul crap of a movie clearly shows.

This movie sucks!

[brazle2 · 1/10 · 4 February 2009]

I agree that I wish we could give a ZERO! This is not even remotely scary or "horror". It didn't make me "think". It doesn't make you contemplate an apocalyptic future. It doesn't do anything except make you wonder when it is actually going to get good and make it worth your time. Biggest waste of 90 minutes ever!!! The acting is awful. The character of Max is not worthy of caring about. The whole "savior" coming to help him is only a brief blip in the last few minutes and then it doesn't explain why he doesn't trust this person he's been waiting for. The scenes with Max's mother are pointless. It doesn't actually add anything to the movie. Please don't waste your time.

Pants

[eddietbrennan · 2/10 · 26 November 2008]

Some of the reviews on this leave me wondering if there are not other versions of this film out there as the one I watched certainly doesn't deserve greater viewing. A waste of time & £3.50: I could have picked a better movie at random off the shelves of the rental store.

This is a low rent & very poor attempt at making a Stalker type interpretation of the Zombie movie but it fails. Totally. It's incoherent & poorly acted. The sets are unconvincing as are the zombies. They give the impression of being mates of the director & I kept expecting to find them stifling smirks. Its not even logical or reasonable within its own reality. Why does the protagonist live in a basic shelter on the ground level of a forest?? He could increase his safety 10 fold by simply living in a tree hut / platform, if he must insist on a forest location, though why he couldn't find & secure a house is beyond me. I could make a better attempt of post-zombie survival than this character! That's enough time wasted on this movie. Bye.

Great Movie Stop Complaining

[tigpoppa · 10/10 · 5 October 2008]

This movie was different but not in a bad way. Usual zombie fans might not like it because this movie has a story outside of the zombies. Like all the good zombie films the zombies are merely background while the characters themselves bring the story to life giving it edge and grittiness.

For being a low budget movie it did a great job of being one of those awesome movies where you get lost in the story it is so intriguing. Fact is it was over and I still found myself wanting more from the sheer brilliance of this masterpiece.

Movies like this this are in the horror genre that I love do not come along often enough. Its films such as these that set a new standard for the industry to follow. SO study hard NYU students you have a tough act to follow!

I actually really enjoyed this movie

[korrec_07 · 7/10 · 28 September 2008]

I don't know why everyone was so harsh on this movie. I'm a zombie freak. every time i find a new zombie movie i have to buy it. so trust me i've seen a lot of bad zombie movies(almost all horror fest for example). this movie starts off very campy and corny. it made me laugh a bit. but as the movie goes on it really turns to a nice "zombie" flick. i wouldn't consider the biosyns(what they call the living dead in the movie) zombies. they run around like monkeys, and you can kill them by just chopping off a limb or two. but some things i really liked about the movie was the zombies actually fought each other. very rarely do i over see that in a zombie movie and i loved it. i loved the role of the army in this movie, why the virus was created and how it backfired. i just really liked the movie. it was a really fresh look at the zombie genre and i can't wait for the second one. hopefully this will green light him for a bigger budget.

One of the worst movies ever made!

[davidhedrick-485-144160 · 1/10 · 29 December 2012]

i like this kind of movie, I thought I could tough it out and watch the whole movie and give them a break but it just keeps getting worse and worse. I did watch it to the end, I wish I hadn't.

There are some truly bad zombie films out there and I grade on a curve, so in this genre even a crap film could get a few stars... this one I would give zero if that were an option.

The story line is unique in that it steals plots and scenarios from many films in a unique combination, and it could be truly great with good acting and direction, sadly there is none. Nor is there good editing, sound effects or camera work.

The writing, ahhhh! To the writers, go back to the fifth grade and listen this time! Spoiler alert (not really, but just in case) The hero finally transforms into a hulk zombie ninja and the action just gets ridiculous, I was expecting him to start jumping through the tree tops and do floating bicycle kicks or something, maybe transform into a dragon and crap zombies from his ass , sadly it was writers that were crapped out of his ass and more truly stupid scenes were to follow.

Uhhhhhh...what?

[MBunge · 4/10 · 12 July 2010]

There's a moment at the beginning of this movie that is sublimely silly. A guy with a mop top hair cut and a Grizzly Adams' beard rides his bicycle through the forest, silently killing zombies with a pair a hatchets and a homemade javelin while speaking to his dead father in voice-over narration. If The Vanguard had been that defiantly peculiar all the way through, I think I would have really enjoyed it. Sadly, the film collapses in on itself after that interestingly odd beginning and turns into a very cheap, very lame and very badly written rip off of The Omega Man. Yeah, that's right. I can't give writer/director Matthew Hope the credit to say he's done an homage to the original book written by Richard Matheson, the first film version starring Vincent Price or the third adaptation starring Will Smith. No, this thing can only be fairly linked to the schlocky 70s version of I Am Legend starring Charlton Heston, with just a pinch of theft from 28 Days Later for seasoning.

As you might guess, this is a zombie picture. In this case, the zombies aren't actually dead. They're humans infected by an evil corporation that took over the world when society collapsed after all the oil ran out, which according to this movie happens in about 5 years. So, I guess we all should start ordering those "survival seeds" advertised on the Glenn Beck Show. Anyway, the infected humans are called Biosyns, have an awful case of varicose veins all over their bodies and act like ticked off orangutans.

In this derivative zombie apocalypse world, we meet Max (Ray Bullock Jr.). He's the aforementioned mop top Grizzly Adams. Max's life seems to consist of wandering around the forest killing zombies, sleeping in a tent surrounded by a crude wooden fence that wouldn't keep out a three year old child, whining via voice-over narration to his dead dad about sundry things and waiting around for a guy named Hareem Jabbar. Max eventually runs into Jamal (Shiv Grewal), an Arab/Indonesian-looking guy that's a solider for the evil corporation who has apparently gone rogue. I say "apparently" because why, how and from what Jamal has gone rogue is never all that clear.

Max and Jamal team up like this is a buddy cop movie and then encounter Zac and Rachel (Steve Weston and Emma Choy), a soldier and a scientist who are fugitives from the evil corporation. How these four end up together is like something out of a Three Stooges' short. They proceed to wander around the forest and engage in some enormously feeble attempts at serious drama. It's hard to get into any more details than that because, frankly, the last half of this movie doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The characters spout dialog that's almost gibberish and do things that serve no logical or reasonable purpose. Long after my interest was exhausted, some supposed secrets were revealed, some people died and it ends with a line of dialog that includes the name of the film, as in "Oh, that's why they called it The Vanguard".

The acting in this isn't all that bad, though there are a few moments where the performers seem to think that showing emotion and random facial twitching are the same thing. The direction is essentially competent, though it appears that 90% of the instructions writer/director Hope gave the cast consisted of "Run over here! Now run over there!" The Vanguard is also a pretty cheap-looking movie, though the soundtrack is quite effective at setting the mood of the story.

The overwhelmingly execrable execution of that story, however, puts a stink on this film all the tomato juice in the world couldn't wash out. There were parts where I genuinely wondered how a human being could have written something like this, with scenes that look, sound and feel more like they were coughed up by a faulty screen writing app for somebody's iPhone.

The kindest comment I can make about The Vanguard is that a cast and crew with some talent tried to make a movie with very little money and a truly horrible script. They failed to produce anything watchable but they didn't leave me angry at completely wasting my time.