Written by Megan LaBruna
Dead 7 Plot summary:
A group of strangers join forces to save what’s left of their post-apocalyptic world from a massive zombie invasion.
I never thought I’d see the day where three of the world’s greatest boy bands, and O-Town, would come together in one terrible quasi-midwestern movie. But thanks to the low standards of Syfy original films, fan girls everywhere have the chance to witness this epic culmination of their former boy band flames.
Dead 7 premiered on April 1st (not as an April Fool’s joke) featuring Nick Carter, Howie Dorough and A.J. McLean of the Backstreet Boys, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick of *NSYNC, Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees, and Erik-Michael Estrada of O-Town. Since the film was produced by Nick Carter, it also features his wife, Lauren Kitt Carter, as one of the lead females, and SPOILER ALERT, the only one of the “Dead 7” crew to actually survive. That’s right, not only is the film filled with terrible acting, but the writers kill off every single beloved boy-bander. This probably should not come as any surprise since the title is literally Dead 7, but it’s still hard to accept.
Anyone watching a Syfy movie at this point knows they’re not tuning in for the spectacular acting or the stellar script. These original films are more like cult classics, where the movies are so bad, they’re actually good. Dead 7 is no exception. While it does have some promising talent with the likes of Debra Wilson as the main villain, Apocolypta, it’s still a pretty terrible movie. It does, however, have what a lot of Syfy films tend to lack, which is a solid beginning, middle, and end. The story starts out with one small town fighting off zombies, which we find out are actually an army that was created and controlled by Apocolypta. The crew is assembled to take her down so humanity can have a chance at survival, and they actually manage to do so; however, they all end up dying in the process, some by incredibly dumb circumstances.
I knew full well what I was in for, but it did not totally disappoint, surprisingly. It’s great to see all these formerly baby faced men who used to have girls (including me) swooning over them, now completely grown up and playing dress up, all together like one big happy man band. My one and only major problem with the movie is the costume design of the characters. The personas are all over the place, half of them are cowboys, but Jeff Timmons is more of a “cow-bro,” Erik-Michael Estrada is a cargo shorts wearing samurai and Lauren Kitt Carter is some kind of Pocahontas/witch doctor mash up. I’m not even going to get into the fact that A.J. McLean’s character is an incredibly sad attempt at a version of Alex from A Clockwork Orange.
They do, however, answer the one major question I had throughout a majority of the film, which is why they refer to the zombies as “copperheads”. It makes no sense until Sirene explains that the epidemic started within a mining community where the men were affected by the copper mines which lead to a zombie outbreak. It doesn’t necessarily make sense, but at least they address it, which is more than I expected.
Anyone who was a major fan of the early 2000s boy bands should absolutely watch Dead 7, if only to relive the joys of seeing these men entertain the masses. Plus there’s an original song at the end featuring ALL THE BOY BANDS TOGETHER. The song alone is enough to fulfill the millennial teenager in all of us.
