Overall: B-
Acting: C
Writing: C
Story: B
Technical aspects: B-
Effects: C
Directed by:
Mark Rapp
Starring:
Aaron Jackson
Ron Marnich
This one is better than a lot of zombie movies I’ve seen
lately - it doesn’t fall into a lot of the clichés of the genre, and I had fun
watching it - though it has its share of flaws.
It’s a pretty basic viral-style
zombie movie, where the world has been taken over by “Biophages.” A team made
up of Sgt. Cain (Aaron Jackson) and Dr. Bell (Ron Marnich) are on a mission for a
military lab to try and find data on the outbreak from the CDC. We join them on
their journey after they’ve found the CDC deserted, and they’re just trying to
get back to their military lab. It’s a bit refreshing that we join them after the zombie
apocalypse is already underway. Rather than go through the motions of the
characters having to “discover” that the undead have turned into flesh-hungry
monsters (a fact that the audience generally already knows) we’re essentially
already on the same page with our mains.
As the movie continues, and the
pair try to get back to the scientists working on a cure in their lab, they
primarily find themselves coming up against human survivors that are far more
dangerous than the ‘phages have ever been, including a Vietnam vet who has
turned to cannibalism, a preacher who has gone mad thinking he can save the
biophages’ souls, and the doctor they’re working for who wants to get rid of
Cain because Cain had an affair with his wife. It is nice to see some focus on the humans rather than exclusively on scene
after scene of repetitive zombie attacks, but coupled with the “What has
humanity become?” tagline on the box comes off as a bit pretentious, as if it’s
a novel concept to try and examine the dark side of humanity.
I also think the end was a bit of a
let-down in that it felt like it was trying to be shocking, but to me at least
came off more as “well, that happened.”
While the cover and the still shots
on the back of the DVD case are in color, the movie itself is shot in black and
white. This was unexpected at first, but I think works in the movie’s favor.
Considering the obviously low budget of the film, it may have saved them from sub-par effects or lighting issues, and honestly keeps the movie looking pretty
clean in terms of tech, as well as giving it a bit of an “old war movie” vibe.
The cinematography was pretty good too. Not anything revolutionary, but the
shots were framed well, and gave it a much more professional feel than most
movies in this budget range.
My biggest complaint was probably
the sound. The acting of our mains is all right, though a lot of the side
characters leave something to be desired. But the dialogue is clearly dubbed in
later (or it's been heavily altered in post-production.) The dubbing is synched well, but it means that all the voices are at the
same level, and tend to be devoid of much volume-related inflection. This is
preferable to some crappy films where you can’t hear what’s going on, but I
don’t think I was ever able to forget that I was watching a movie. The sound
was jarring the entire time, and so I was never able to be entirely absorbed in
the film.
Overall, I think the movie was
good. Not the best I’ve seen, but it looked professional and clean, was pretty
enjoyable to watch, and was different (and better) than the majority of
straight-to-video zombie films out there.
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