Erupting from the loins of the little film studio known as ‘The Asylum’ comes their latest little lower budget Hollywood parallel Direct-To-Video flick in ‘I am Omega’ which naturally coincides with the 200 billion dollar Will Smith vehicle ‘I am Legend’. More accurately though, ‘I am Omega’ seems a little closer tied to the 1971 Charlie Hess Sci-Fi thriller ‘Omega Man’ which I also saw for just the other day. As far as flicks from ‘The Asylum’ go, ‘I am Omega’ is their best one yet, at least of the ones I’ve seen. Admittedly this includes fare such as ‘Snakes on a Train’, ‘Tranmorphers’ and ‘Super Croc’ all surely among the worst films ever made, but for a little while at least ‘I am Omega’ was more than just a ‘good flick for Asylum standards’ but a just a plain old decent flick. For a little while at least.

Kung Fu kicking Marc Dacoscos is Renchard (not Neville as The Aslyum isn't trying to pay Richard Matheson one red cent) who is in a world where it seems that he is the last. Why the world has ended is never explained or even glossed over for that matter as far as I could tell, and we get a flashback of Renchard’s wife and child being attacked by some wild zombies. Now years later Renchard lives alone in his compound outside of Los Angeles, slaying wayward zombies with knives, guns, round house kicks and nun-chucks, all the while battling the dementia that comes from being all by yourself for years on end. Renchard also makes frequent trips out to various parts of the city planting explosives here and there in what looks like his attempt to rid the world, which consists of only himself as far as he knows, of the zombie pestilence.

One fateful day Renchard gets an incoming message on his computer from a video feed. I should note that Renchard has all kinds of password protections on his computer, which seems odd since the only person he needs to lock out of his computer would be himself and one also has to marvel that the whole internet, video chat thing has been made self sustaining in this near future which is awesome. Anyway, against

his better judgement Renchard allows the video feed which reveals a woman on the other side of the transmission which freaks him out and makes act karazy. Again the video feed comes in, but now calmer he finds out that there is a woman alive in the world by the name of Brianna (Jennifer Lee Wiggins) and not only that, she tells him of a place called Antioch where there are thousands living with no infection. Girlfriend just needs a kind soul to come in and pick her up. Problem with that is she’s in the middle of the city where the main zombie nest is and being as how Renchard has the city primed to explode in a few hours he tells her ‘my bad, so sad, can’t help you’.

At least that was until a couple of good ol’ boys named Vincent (Geoff Mead – who also penned the screenplay) and Mike (Ryan Lloyd), obviously omega 2 and omega 3 come along and inform Renchard that Brianna has the key to curing the world in her blood and they also convince him of the error of his ways. Now the three of them go into the sewers to fight zombies and save the world, but there’s something fishy about these good ‘ol boy though, something fishy indeed.

Though Dacoscos' claim to fame is more for his speed, agility and martial arts skill than his acting ability, he’s not a bad actor at all, and ‘I am Omega’ in my opinion was at its best when it was just Dacoscos alone dealing with his myriad of issues and the zombies. There were a few scenes in this film that actually made me jump, which is quite a rare feat indeed. It was scary to a point, while watching it alone in the dark, that I considered popping out the DVD and watching it the next day when there was some daylight out, but alas it was not necessary as the film got away from that promising beginning devolved into something else altogether.

Just about the time our good ‘ol boys showed up on the scene, ‘I am Omega’ stopped being a psychological style thriller and turned into a run of the mill run and shoot save the damsel in distress gore fest, without the budget for gore which ultimately dooms the movie. Director Griff Furst seems to have a pretty good grip on the horror aspects of the movie but not the action implementation as the change in narrative became trite and quite honestly nonsensical. For the most part though all the performances were better than expected, the zombies looked halfway decent, though there were a lack of things that I’m sure the filmmakers would have liked to have put in but didn’t have the money for, like blood squibs and the like, and the stock looked like film, whether it was shot on video or not.

‘I am Omega’ is not a good movie, but it is a bit landmark in that we actually get discuss a movie from The Asylum and discuss it like it was normal film and not some junk shot by some guy with a handicam and his buddies. Let’s hope that this is the start of something of a new trend from this odd little studio.