Back in 2006, I had the chance to see Gary Ugarek's Deadlands: The Rising at the first It Came From Lake Michigan Film Festival...and it was a great zombie movie. Well, Gary is continuing with his plans for a Deadlands trilogy, and he's bringing us part two, Deadlands 2: Trapped...and, Gary is upping the ante and taking his zombie opus in a completely different direction!

In the original Deadlands, the dead had risen and a group of people banded together to find a way to survive. There was no explanation of what happened or what caused the zombies to rise...and there didn't need to be one, the zombies were there and the mystery had to take a back seat to survival. Now, in Deadlands 2, Ugarek is giving us a bit more back story of where these flesh eaters came from and how they can be stopped. The story here takes place in a small town in Maryland, a town that the government has decided to use as an experiment for a virus they've been working on, and, despite the warnings of the lead scientist, the virus is far to virulent to be released! When it is let loose on the town, the residents turn into maddened, flesh craving monsters, but they still have enough residual memory left to head to the last place they associate a good memory with. Now, five lone survivors find themselves holed up in the local movie theatre, surrounded by undead monsters, with no way to get out, and no way to get help! Can they escape and get word to the outside world of the governments’ evil experiment? And who will need to be sacrificed? These are all questions that are answered...but to tell you more would ruin the end of the world...wouldn't it?

With Deadlands 2: Trapped, Gary Ugarek keeps enough of your typical zombie mythology to make this recognizable, but mixes in enough new material to make it his own. The gore is here...but not as much as you'd imagine, but the tension stays ratcheted up to 11 throughout the entire movie...and there's an ending that makes me anticipate 2012, when Ugarek plans to release the final part of his trilogy! I'm giving Deadlands 2: Trapped three out of four cigars, it's not the perfect zombie movie, but it's still a damned good, high tension horror movie! You can find out more by heading over to Gary's Playing With Dead Things web page.