A journalist accompanies three veterans to the site of the climactic battle of the war between the living and the undead. There, he asks the men to share their stories of the encounter, while the film asks the viewer to believe that the fate of humanity rested on the outcome of a skirmish involving a whole six soldiers.
No, it's not any more convincing than it sounds.
Ridge War Z (AKA Gory Ridge) feels like it wants to be the quasi-documentary zombie war narrative that the World War Z novel also offered, but that the film based on the book chose not to be.
Perhaps, in more skilled (and wealthier) hands, this approach could have worked. Here, with the script's clumsy, plodding repetition of the "war is hell" refrain, and the embarrassingly meagre zombie-fighting action it offers, the outcome is pure tedium. I can't really blame the cast for this: they do a decent job, but they simply aren't able to get much out of the trite dialogue and weak action scenes.
Ridge War Z seems to earnestly want to be a thoughtful film about war that just happens to have zombies in it, but it lacks the ability to match this ambition. I can't see that it will please any audience. People who want a drama about war are likely to be turned off by the zombies, and those who are keen on undead carnage will be thoroughly unimpressed by the anemic zombie action on offer.
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