JeruZalem

JeruZalem

Starring Yael Grobglas, Yon Tumarkin, Danielle Jadelyn, Tom Graziani

Directed by Doron Paz & Yoav Paz

The Story:
American-Jewish girls Rachel (Yael Grobglas) and Sarah (Danielle Jadelyn) decide to take a trip to Tel Aviv after Sarah's brother dies, and on the flight they meet archaeologist Kevin Reed (Yon Tumarkin), who convinces the girls to go to Jerusalem with him for Yom Kippur.  While Kevin and Sarah take a liking to each other, Rachel falls for townsman Omar (Tom Graziani), and the four friends hit up the Jerusalem night life.

Then all literal hell breaks loose.  Kevin has a bad feeling and shows Sarah a video of an exorcism taken in Jerusalem in the 70s, and believes that one of the doors to hell is in Jerusalem.  Then Sarah witnesses the military bombing parts of Jerusalem, and the four friends take off for safety, as the city is suddenly filled with flying creatures and giant monsters.

The Synopsis:
"JeruZalem" (with the deliciously insane pun of including the Z in capital to represent the word 'zombie,' even though Jerusalem doesn't have a 'z' in it) seems to want to be something more than it became, but ultimately it went down the safe road of first-person POV horror through the use of Google Glass.  The film opens with the exorcism of a young woman (who had actually died three days earlier), and combined Catholics, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders to try to rid the demon, but are unsuccessful.  Later in the movie, Omar mentions how close the Catholics, Jews, and Muslims are in Jerusalem, and we find that Rachel and Sarah are Jewish, Kevin is Catholic, and Omar is Muslim.  There was so many different intriguing directions the film could've gone in.

Instead we get winged zombies (maybe?  Or they could be demons, which would make more sense, but then again it'd be called 'JeruDalem' or something like that) and giant monsters who roam the town for some reason.

We see all the carnage through Sarah's Google Glass, which basically meant the majority of the dialogue in the film is Sarah talking to said Google Glass ("Glass, take a picture," "Glass, what time is it?" "Glass, open nagivation," and the like), but that's the most intelligent conversations had in the movie.  The rest is typical horror dialogue like "run!" or "what's happening?"  Totally uninspiring.

The effects of the movie are laughable at best.  The zombies spawn burnt wings (hence why I think they're demons instead of zombies, but what do I know?) that are the worst CGI imaginable - until you see glimpses of the giant monsters, which actually look worse.  It's like the Paz brothers decided to make "Cloverfield" in Jerusalem, but had the budget of your average teenager cutting lawns for a living.

The characters are entirely unlikable and interchangeable, so generic that you could pick them out of a random generator for horror films.  Rachel is the typical flirty best friend who just wants to party.  Kevin is the shy, yet mysterious, guy who knows more than he thinks.  Omar is the usual vision of a foreigner who talks to tourists with simple platitudes.  Sarah, as the lead, is absolutely the worst.  She hates God because her brother died.  She whines and complains, and then flirts with Kevin and has a good time, until it all hits the fan.  Then she becomes some sort of wannabe hero by rescuing Kevin - who she just met - at the near cost of her own life.  Sorry, but if I just met you a few days ago and the world was ending, well, good luck.  Instead she goes on her own adventure to find him and then gets mad at people for leaving her.  She's absolutely the worst character, and the one we're supposed to identify with the most.  So, needless to say, job not well done.

The Summary:
If I'm taking the film for what it could've been, I'd say "JeruZalem" is a hit.  However, since that direction was the path not taken by Google Glass, it went in a train wreck direction that resulted in more "ZZZ's" than anything.

The Score: D+