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58 out of 75 people found the following comment useful :-
The End of the World as we don't Want to Know it!, 7 April 2008
3/10
Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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.

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42 out of 62 people found the following comment useful :-
Mad previous comment by Malvolio-5, 20 September 2008
1/10
Author: indesec from United Kingdom

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.

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42 out of 63 people found the following comment useful :-
missed chance, 9 April 2008
3/10
Author: hammer46_ from Belgium

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.

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17 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
awful, awful, awful film, 16 October 2008
1/10
Author: wookied from United Kingdom

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

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8 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Absolute Cheese only salvaged by a decent story line, 30 September 2008
4/10
Author: wynonasbigbrownbeaver from Japan

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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

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8 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
A great character lost in a confused film, 1 October 2008
4/10
Author: jaym from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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.

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9 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
I actually really enjoyed this movie, 28 September 2008
7/10
Author: korrec_07 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Awful!, 4 November 2009
1/10
Author: runara94 from Norway

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!

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Mediocre Horror movie, 14 July 2009
3/10
Author: twhint from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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.

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7 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
yeah, it grew on me, 15 October 2008
8/10
Author: mari Free from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

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

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