Daylight's End (2016) User Reviews

Consider its budget!

[Patient444 · 6/10 · 29 July 2016]

For a small budget production, this script was way over the number of pages you usually see. It had a plot, characters, ideas, good execution, good actors.

One of my favorites is Lance Henriksen, I simply adore the man. From his sci fi early work to the horror side he adopted lately, he is just great to see on the screen. One of the most underrated actors in my honest opinion.

And about the movie: you'll pretty much see full on action. A lot of gun power, some small hand to hand combats, and plenty of blood. Not gore, but blood. You'll see humanity, monsters, light and dark. It is a movie that will keep you going for sure. If you're into horror, or zombies and you wanna pass some time, this is a better way to do so.

Cheers!

Vampire-Zombie-Like Creatures vs. Survivors

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 16 September 2016]

Following to an outbreak that turned most of mankind into vampire- zombie-like creatures, the few survivors have to fight the creatures and marauders. When a group that is rescuing a girl is killed by pillagers, a young woman called Samantha "Sam" Sheridan is spared to be raped by the criminals. However, the lonely driver Thomas Rourke (Johnny Strong) kills the men and saves Sam. She offers ammunition, supplies, fuel and food if Rourke drives the girl and her to her hideout before the sunset. Rourke arrives in the dark but her group protects them from the creatures and Sam, Rourke and the girl arrive at the sanctuary in a former police station; but Rourke recognizes The Alpha (Whitlock Krzysztof Soszynski) that leads the creatures. The leaders Frank Hill (Lance Henriksen), his son Ethan Hill (Louis Mandylor) and the former police officer Chris (Hakeem Kae-Kazim) suspect of Rourke, but they promise to honor Sam's promise. He is locked in a cell but during the night, a strong creature breaks in the building while the survivors hear noises outside. In the morning, they find that the creatures gave pulled wrecked cars in front of their garage and their cars are trapped inside the building. Rourke convinces a small group to go with him to the hide- out of the creatures to destroy The Alpha. Why Rourke is obsessed to kill The Alpha? Will they succeed in their intent?

"Daylight's End" is another entertaining film in a post-apocalyptic world where survivors need to fight to stay alive. The monsters are a sort of vampire-like creatures like in Vincent Price's "The Last Man on Earth". The veteran Lance Henriksen has good performance in the role of a leader of survivors. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

Fun, exciting but will not be very memorable.

[drphillgood · 6/10 · 31 July 2016]

I'm a fan of this genre. There's not much new ground broken here, but the movie is fun and very professionally done. A lot of new apocalyptic movies look cheap and this one does not. The action is very well done and the scenes are very intense. The scenes with guns are all very exceptionally done. The character development is weak however, except for the antagonist, who is very interesting. There is very little reason to connect to, or to care about, the good guys though. I see a lot of inflated reviews here, so I registered to say that the movie is actually pretty good, but not as great as early reviews here led me to believe. I think this is worth the "price of admission," but only on a slow night.

Surprisingly good.....

[s3276169 · 4 August 2016]

I have to confess I came to Daylights End with very limited expectations. I was then surprised at how easily it exceeded all of them.

This is a very good film. Its intelligently written, with a implausibly plausible premise and down to earth, honest characterizations, that lend this film a certain maturity. It reminiscent of films like 28 Days Later and whilst it has a B budget, still manages to hand in an A grade performance.

The action scenes, in particular, are "polished". Clearly a lot of work went into the run and gun scenes and I suspect, a military expert was used to lend the whole thing an air of realism.

Just as surprising is the quality of acting. Pretty much everyone from Lance Henrikson, Johnny Strong and the rest of the cast hand in decent performances.

Its remarkable how much can be done with so little, whilst deep pockets Hollywood often achieves so little, with so much. Well shot, acted and directed, with a convincing story, that's very entertaining. Eight out of ten from me.

Generic zombie vamp post apocalypse film

[tommaguzzi · 4/10 · 4 January 2021]

You will think you have seen this before because it copies ideas from every other film in the genre. Less well. The combat is repetitive, gets boring so quickly I used Amazon 10sec FF all the time during the prolonged action scenes. All the usual characters are present. Strong silent loner, Hottish female lead Wise old veteran, punk biker gangs ect, every trope in these films, they are all there. The plot is laughingly bad, nothing makes sense, the survivors have made a home in a police station/prison full of steel doors and rooms with barred windows yet no one thinks to close and lock them when the vamps break in. They could trap them, ambush them, fire bomb, electricute, UV light them. But no, they run upstairs, down corridors never closing a door and blast away until all ammo used up and then use knives until the vamps catch and kill them, except the loner/hero of course. Survivors make an idiotic plan to escape using scavenged vehicles to travel to aircraft abandoned for years then just and fly off to somewhere supposedly safer. They get a running vehicle but then hero/loner besides getting all his red shirt allies killed in a needless attack on vamp central leads them all back to the prison, vamps chasing him down the street in Broad Daylight without burning up, which is exactly what happens to their leader 15 minutes later when said hero lures it outside to kill it. Then it ends. No explanation no idea if the survivors make it. They still look like they are trying for the aircraft but now the vamps leader is dead there should be no reason, since hero/loner said once lead vamp is dead the other vamps will no longer be a threat. loner/hero drives off after getting half the survivors killed, leaves them to it and thats it. I made it to the end so a generous 4 stars for average acting, decent locations and post apocalypse feel.

Pretty Entertaining

[SciFighter · 7/10 · 31 July 2016]

Really enjoyed William Kaufman's and Johnny Strong's last outing together in Sinners and Saints back in 2010. That's also the last time Johnny Strong had been on screen except a small short in-between. I wish I could see Johnny Strong do more movies as he normally does quite well Sinners and Saints was a great action flick and I enjoyed Daylight's End just as much.

This movie had a lot of what I like, post apocalyptic setting, lot's of action, some Sci-fi mixed in. This was a good movie for what it was. I see many people saying it's good for a low budget flick while that's true, I have also seen many big budget movies that were really bad. If you have a pretty good script like this and some OK actors and actresses, even on a small budget it can be very enjoyable. That's just what this movie is a good way to spend a few hours. Sure it's not earth shattering but we did enjoy it for the few hours we watched it.

So go in with an open mind and don't expect the world and you might just come out having enjoyed this flick.

Action-packed Vamp/Zomb Siege

[nashw82 · 5/10 · 26 September 2020]

This movie started slow, and by that I don't mean you have to wait for the action, instead it makes you wait a long time before anyone speaks. The action scenes are slick, well staged and frenetically shot like a Bourne movie, and there's alot of action; thousands of shots are fired throughout the flick. I just wish they had shaved 10 minutes off the shooting for some interesting character development so that we actually cared about what was happening. Instead we get one or two brief flashbacks, and a lot of intense stares and macho shouting. The movie is well made for its budget and its and interesting film, it just really falls flat because it doesn't pull you into the story. The Vamp/Zombies are intense and fast, though never explained much, and that would be okay if the story had other things going on, but it doesn't. I usually love a good Siege narrative, especially in the horror genre, but this was too light on the narrative part. See it if you like lots of weapon heavy shootouts with relentless hordes... or you could just watch someone play Left4Dead for 90 minutes.

This movie had every chance to go wrong

[mochteam · 7/10 · 12 September 2019]

But it didn't. Low budget movie but it's actually a decent watch. Usually when I've watched B-flicks with these themes they just come off as cheesy or cheap. This films uses it's effects very well and doesn't try to be more than what it is. Actually the movie seems to have been perfectly made for it's budget. The costumes and makeup looked good. Why the 7/10 though? Well I never nit pick low budget films like this where they got the job done of being entertaining. Only problems I had with the film is that the grenades had terrible effects and should of just been left out. The guns just seemed to last forever like they had infinite ammo.

As a gun enthusiast myself it always bugs me when the guns don't seem realistic especially in apocalypse movies where they should be conserving ammo. It also kept getting on my nerves that the main character had a semi auto rifle but it fired like it was a sub machine gun. Even worse it was a "Socom 16" rifle (which it said on the bolt. Those rifles take ammo that isn't exactly easy to come by and it's also very expensive ammo. It really would be the last type of weapon you'd want in an apocalypse because you would never find any ammo for it yet he's firing rounds like he put in an infinite ammo cheap code.

Other part of the movie I didn't enjoy so much were some of the other characters with the exception of Sam and Annabelle they all actually seem pretty unlikable. Johnny Strong (haha what a name) the main character pulled off the likeable hero part. The other characters though I mean it was a tough choice between who was the bigger jerk. Acting wise the acting fit the movie.

So yeah a 7/10 for this movie. It was a decent watch for this type of genre.

Good enough home action movie, but falls apart at the end

[cjdnewall · 3/10 · 31 July 2016]

Decent enough a action movie to be entertaining for an hour or two. A lone wolf whom the filmmakers want us to believe a badass makes his way through a zombie apocalypse city. He is taken in by a group of survivors holed up in a police station prison. They have security cameras, alarms, steel door, and cells to lock themselves in if things go to hell. The plan is to assault the hotel where the zombies vampires and their alpha master are hiding (sound familiar, I am legend). The action scenes are OK as a run n gun but stupid characters.

For instance, a guy has to put a bomb on the other side of a sleeping horde and walks through the middle instead of around, then gets to the other end virtually waves to the others "hallo!!" And fails to see the monster obviously not hiding well at all right behind him. OK fine whatever we'll just pretend the Munster was invisible.

The movie has some parts it tries to be emotional or sentimental, right before the final action scene. This scene is like the downtime of any movie but could have been longer for adequate toilet break.

Now **possible spoilers** the movie falls apart during the final fight scene happens to be the last stand when the plan fails, which happens inside the survivors stronghold, which remember is a cop shop with lock up prison. They use tactics for 30seconds then just run for it. Not once did any of them close a prison gate to lock in/out zombies for shooting gallery. Apart from that one broom closet door. So lock all the kids in one cell when bringing in the main character at the start but don't use any locking gates for protecting at the final fight wen they know the zombies are coming, but use a phone to lure them to the leader.

It just ruined the an already half-crap movie. I say half-crap because it's only half crap. As stereotypical - the black guy gets overrun by zombies first in a stupidly predictable way, but not before the stupid guy.

Not much in the way of bad movie laughs. I would've better enjoyed my time watching the last parts of twister on TV with ads. Worth a look on 1$ DVD.

Decent

[someanse · 6/10 · 7 August 2016]

Imo this movie certainly deserve more than 5.

Yes, it looks cheap in many places but it also has redeeming qualities. Basically, everything that comes out of this movie is never very good and in some instances it is really lacking, but overall it is enjoyable.

The characters are very numerous and we don't get to know them very well. They will mostly stay complete strangers to the audience until the end. Even the main protagonist is that way. But on the other hand, they aren't ''flat'',''idiotic'',''generic'' characters (minus the ''BADASS'' hero), they still have decent lines and interactions among each others.

The camera quality though suffers from the low-budget thingy and gives that cheap impression to the movie. While the set is decent>good, the costumes are very authentic, same for the makeup, and the casting (when it comes to visual). Just to explain my thoughts on that, there is a pattern in recent movie where every character is a teenager, with a stupid makeup and a stupid face (I am sure its about makeup and light), a good case is the recent Warcraft.

I do think that the plot is sometimes inconsistent, and that they chose to film some scenes just for the sake of having those scenes in the final cut. Worst, the same is true for some characters: there is clearly one character that is just there to make one scene happens and that afterward becomes completely useless; that can probably be true in other movies, but here it is quite shocking in the sense that everything might indicates that this characters is important or will become important later on. Which never happens, it's just a filler.

My review might look ''weak'' because it doesn't manage to underline the inner qualities or deficiencies of the movie, but it is only because the movie is that way. There is nothing really shiny about it, and although it has deficiencies in certain areas, I still think that it provides for an overall agreeable watch. Despite its faults there is a sense of authenticity that helps build intensity. I have to say, the final-final scene also made me sweat, which doesn't happen so much to me in other movies.

I wish they had a better writer for the characters and plot development, otherwise they still have a decent man capable of taking care of the ambiances&atmosphere; the general ideas are there, it's just that tiny bit of execution and cleverness that is lacking.

To summarize + Costumes/guns/(visual)casting + Intensity + Gunfights ain't bad - Gunfights sometimes feel a bit repetitive and sometimes idiotic - this cheap ''look'' of the camera - some inconsistencies in the plot or some scenes (but that would require spoilers to elaborate) - characters development really lacking

You should pass this one

[procletnic · 3/10 · 30 July 2016]

Another low budget production with an atrocious script. The whole thing is just a collection of boring action scenes with very little in-between. Forget about a good story, forget about characters that you care about, forget about nice scenery. You'll be staring at a brick wall, a prison cell or a dirty street. That's it. The "horde" of zombies consists of 15 people. They don't even bother to change their clothes, so you'll be seeing a lot of the same people playing as various different zombies. It's not obvious at first but it becomes pretty evident by the end of the movie. This could have been much better with a good script. The first ten minutes are the best part of the whole thing but don't get fooled, the rest of the movie is complete and utter trash.

Surprisingly badass

[Bigchin33 · 9/10 · 30 December 2018]

Quite possibly the most tactically accurate movie about zombies I have ever seen. As far as I ca tell bring prior service. Non combative. The dialog isn't bloated with unnecessary character development. Lots of action. Realistic scenarios involving seeking out new vehicles( battery). Not like most zombie movies where the gas is never bad and the car always starts. Awesome flick

Another fast paced zombie movie. Too bad the action is monotonous.

[peterp-450-298716 · 6/10 · 25 August 2016]

To be honest, I feel sorry for those zombies. Their life really is meaningless. A numb existence without any excitement or pleasure. No pleasant dinners at a favorite restaurant. No well-deserved vacation on a sunny beach. No sports or interesting hobbies. Their sole purpose is hunting uninfected fellow men. And when there's nobody left to hunt, the only thing they can do is standing idly somewhere, probably wondering what to do next. Dead boring in other words. The undead in "Daylight's End" have an additional problem. They hate sunlight. Much like the creatures in "I'm Legend". The only difference with the latter film is that you knew how the misery began. In this movie the filmmakers keep you dangling.

Nowadays it's pretty hard to come up with an original zombie movie, since the market is flooded with this genre. Here they tried to give a different twist to this sub-genre by giving the bloodthirsty creatures characteristics of a vampire. That's immediately demonstrated in the opening scene when Rourke (Johnny Strong) finds an undead hiding in a freezer. In no time it's being reduced by Rourke into a smoldering barbecue sausage.

Rourke is a loner who travels across the U.S. as a kind of Mad Max in his armored Plymouth, equipped with a complete arsenal of firearms. His only goal in life is to eliminate as much murderous mutated persons as possible. As gunmen did in the Wild West, he keeps track of the score by carving notches in the butt of his rifle with his immense dagger. The not so talkative Rourke looks ultra-cool and mega-efficiently. The controlled way of attacking, the calm look, always a well thought out answer and always using a targeted plan to take revenge on the creatures responsible for the death of his wife. All this makes him the ultimate anti-hero.

Although this is a low-budget film, at times the images used aren't inferior to those of some blockbusters. By contrast, the acting level of some equals that of an actor in an ordinary television program. Luckily Lance Henriksen's contribution was significantly better than that in "Harbinger Down". And what a surprise. You'll also be witnessing some stupid decisions. Obviously this is necessary in this genre of films. Otherwise nothing significantly would happen. Is there a positive side to this film? Yep of course. It's generously filled with action and swift, fierce confrontations. When Rourke joins a group of survivors, ex-policemen who barricaded themselves in a police station in downtown Dallas, and tries to fend off the daily attacks by zombies, a seemingly infinite number of battle scenes are presented. And it's also hard to keep track of the number of head shots.

And that was the biggest let down for me. After 15 minutes, the course of a confrontation was quite predictable and a bit trite. Over and over again a significant number of zombies are gunned down by a hail of bullets but they still managed to grab a poor soul every time. Oddly enough Rourke failed to hit the big leader despite his skills as a shooter. And skills he has! His precision is masterly and time after time again it's breathtaking to see how an opponent ends up with a gaping bullet wound right in the middle of the forehead. After seeing the head size off the end boss, it's hard to believe he could miss that. "Daylight's end" won't show anything new. It's an action-packed horror and the frantic pace makes sure you won't get bored eventually.

More reviews here : http://bit.ly/1KIdQMT

Watchable but you'll lose interest before it's finished.

[michelb-83-46554 · 4/10 · 18 October 2017]

It's on a budget and cinematography is fine. They chose a style for photography, camera work is good so you can watch this flick and not feel it low budget actually.

However, characters are one dimensional and stereotypical. You won't feel attached to any of them which in a zombie movie can be good, people die, but you won't care much neither.

The plot isn't smart, it borrows the two main ideas from two other famous movies in this genre you most certainly have already seen. It also suffer probably by some cuts that left out some scenes that might have helped understand more. Sometimes you wonder a little what's happening. The movie also doesn't offer any background on what kind of apocalypse is and what are these human creatures that drop if shot in the chest not like zombies and burn in daylight like vampires. ???.

All in all there's a lot of good action and we don't need a lot of plot to make a watchable genre's movie, but bad characters and boring although scarce dialogues make this movie a little uninteresting and 20 minutes too long.

better than average zombie film

[quasar-08909 · 23 October 2016]

considering the marketplace is flooded with hundreds of b level zombie movies like this, it's always best to approach this sort of thing with low expectations to avoid disappointment.

i,m happy to report that for once, this movie actually delivers by being a reasonably good post apocalyptic zombie movie, full of non stop action, a decent plot and sympathetic characters you can actually root for. i also loved the interesting new take on zombies by making them part vampire due to their aversion to sunlight.

Lance Henriksen should be a stranger to no one, and adds some star power to proceedings, even if he isn't the main character. if you have nothing else to watch one evening, give this a try, you may be pleasantly surprised, i know i was.

This could have been good.

[mhorg2018 · 1/10 · 2 December 2016]

I have to ponder how this got so many good reviews. Are all of the reviewers from Texas, where this was filmed? I watched it the other night on Starz and was bored virtually from the beginning. This is just another movie where they couldn't make up their mind to make a zombie movie or a vampire movie, so they made the creatures (just dirty faced people who can be spotted more than once - blame that on budget and lack of decent make up, the SFX are pretty sparse too, for 2 million they didn't really get their money's worth) a cross between the two. Sunlight and bullets will kill them. The story is kind of silly. One guy is hunting the Vombie Alpha who killed his wife and kid. He's made it - On his own - from the Bronx down to Texas. He never seems to run out of ammo and every shot is pretty much deadly. He saves a woman (who is a pretty bad actress and judging from her character, shouldn't have been with the two cops she pretty much gets killed) by killing about 7 ravagers, none of whom seem to be able to hide before being shot. They save a woman who's nuts. She's trying to breast feed a doll (which is a decent idea but how has she survived?) Few if any of the people in this have any survival instincts at all. Supposedly an unknown plague caused this. So where is the LAST place one wants to stay when a plague erupts? A city. Anyhow, the story is kind of dull and familiar. The main character, a loner ala Mad Max, has one expression and can barely act, but since he produced it, gets to be the star. I don't know how they got Lance Henriksen to be in this, but he's the best and worst part of it. His acting is fine, but his character is dumb as a rock. Vampires have to sleep in the day, yet some of these are always awake. I don't want to give away anymore, but if I knew where a whole nest of Vombies was hiding out, I'd either A) get the hell out of dodge. or B) Burn that place to the ground. Well a lot of folks liked it, but I'm not one of them. I imagine this movie (quite PG rated really) will show up as another lameoid on the SyFy channel pretty soon. P.S. The Poster makes this film look way better than it is.

Decent Zombie Apocalypse

[kosmasp · 6/10 · 8 August 2016]

A zombie apocalypse is never a good thing. A movie with that as a theme in it though, can be a really nice thrill ride. So while this may not be the best movie about this ever, it is more than a decent effort. We get the same guy who played the main character in another Kaufmann movie (Saints&Sinners) and gets to shine here again.

Though he is not getting as much attention here, because of the role itself, the action is very well shot. There are clichés abound of course that may weigh down the impact of the movie or the characters fate for some watching. But you should be aware of that. Overall it's nicely done for a small budget movie and one that still manages to have some style ...

This is not science fiction or fantasy but another crapshot horror movie!

[garyhoney1984 · 1/10 · 30 June 2019]

I really can't believe Lance Henriksen give them the time of day to do this! Johnny Strong needs to stick to singing and not acting. Come on people we've had over 50 years of zombie movies it's about time you guys lay it to rest. These are stupid low-budget horror flicks.

Awesome , perhaps better plot than the walking

[ryandschreiber · 7/10 · 23 February 2020]

The action is spot on. The plot has you on the edge of your seat at the right times. The characters serve their roles adequately. Towards the end, in the last 15 minutes if they had just paid for a Rob Zombies Dragula song, just at the very end, instead of the weak canned video game elevator rock, the movie would have scored much higher, in my opinion, but who knows what would have cost? Over-all, pretty good for a low budget action film. I definitely liked it.

Incongruent and unbelievable logic

[onthewatchlist · 4/10 · 16 November 2021]

The survivors were effectively collateral for Rourke to achieve his goal. The irony is, none of them would have died if Sam hadn't brought him in:

• attracted the attention of the hordes when they blazed into town just before dusk
• his severely botched plan to try and nuke the alpha
• running BACK to the station as he was chased by the zombies after botching said plan!

And at the end, we're expected to believe that he's the hero? We have the remaining survivors gazing up to him from the bus as if in some form of gratitude. Icing on the cake: as if he hadn't done enough damage, Sam invites him to join them in the next leg, so he can wreak even more havoc.

Plot: 2 Action: 7 Overall: 4.

Enjoyable movie

[alexkzapf · 7/10 · 26 December 2019]

Have to say. Sometimes a movie surprises you. The acting was good. Not spectacular but good. The lead had the right amount of brooding personality along with enough action behaves and looks to pull of the role. Again. Good movie for what it is. Definitely surprised me.

I wear my sunglasses at night!

[ritterbushk · 1/10 · 26 June 2019]

No one: Director: You know what would make this scene better........ If you put sunglasses on!

Great action and horror flick.

[itzaferg · 9/10 · 22 August 2016]

This is an indie movie but it doesn't feel like an indie movie. It felt like the original Mad Max or 28 Days Later! Great action scenes and lots of quick scare shots.

Johnny Strong (Fast and the Furious, Black Hawk Down) delivers a great performance along with Lance Henriksen (Aliens, Aliens 3, Terminator).

The movie was directed by William Kauffman. He is a killer indie director that makes some great action films with limited budgets. Don't know how he pulls it off. Can't wait till he gets a real Hollywood budget. Chad Law wrote the script. They both did Sinners and Saints, which was another good movie.

Johnny Strong did the soundtrack to the film and it is really good!

The movie was filmed entirely in Texas. If you live in Dallas, you may recognize a few areas. I was surprised to find out that the movie was shot in Dallas at the old Police Station. It is in the same building the Lee Harvey Oswald was shot in. The sets and environments were awesome and made you feel like you were in the post apocalyptic world.

Surprisingly good

[nigelpreece-950-231484 · 7/10 · 3 January 2023]

Ok let's start with the obvious. This film isn't going to win any Oscar's!!

A lone drifter in a zombie apocalypse world, happens upon a band of good guy survivors holding out in a police station.

Ignore the plot holes, ignore the fact that the hero must have a gym membership still as he's the most ripped guy you'll ever see!!!!! Just enjoy a good zombie action pic that doesn't take itself seriously at all.

A half decent cast including Johnny Strong, Lance Henrikson and Louis Mandylor add a touch of quality to a low budget horror/action flick.

The pacing is good, there's barely a dull moment, and the final 3rd is all out action.

Like a cross between walking dead and a poor man's WWZ.

Cruddy, Creepy, Convalescent, Zombie Movie

[wandernn1-81-683274 · 3/10 · 22 January 2021]

Lotta gunplay. And it has Lance Henriksen, but thats not enough to help it much,

Story weak. I Am Legend, it is not. 3/10