Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:30 am
I've seen this hyped as "The best zombie movie ever made", which is funny because one of the trailers that runs before this film is a zombie movie and they have a quote calling it "The best zombie movie made in decades."
Let me summarize this review for you in what I imagine a pitch for this film would sound like: "It's The Blair Witch Project set in England, but with zombies!"
Bullshit Marketing Alert: The box cover shows a big man wearing a flak jacket and holding a shotgun with zombies and a ruined London in the background. That scene, man, and London are not in this film.
As for the actual film, shaky camera work throughout as the whole movie is supposedly shot by survivors with hand held cameras. The combination of piss poor lighting makes this film harder to watch than Blair Witch.
They try to use this for effect, but it really fails in the worst possible way. The shaky camera and bad lighting make it difficult to make sense of what you're seeing or tell who is who.
To further complicate things for the viewer, there are several groups, not just one group. So you see snippets of video from each group without warning that you've changed to a different group.
Casting people who look similar was also a less than brilliant move.
Despite the endless poor film making choices, you will be able to keep track of the main plot line. I can't even give them credit for that because it's so transparent. As the box cover says: "The survivors of the zombie plague face something worse than the zombies." Ok, it doesn't say that exactly as I don't remember the exact wording, but that's basically it. How does one not see where that is going?
I can only recommend this to film makers who want to see an example of what not to do.
3 out of 10.
Let me summarize this review for you in what I imagine a pitch for this film would sound like: "It's The Blair Witch Project set in England, but with zombies!"
Bullshit Marketing Alert: The box cover shows a big man wearing a flak jacket and holding a shotgun with zombies and a ruined London in the background. That scene, man, and London are not in this film.
As for the actual film, shaky camera work throughout as the whole movie is supposedly shot by survivors with hand held cameras. The combination of piss poor lighting makes this film harder to watch than Blair Witch.
They try to use this for effect, but it really fails in the worst possible way. The shaky camera and bad lighting make it difficult to make sense of what you're seeing or tell who is who.
To further complicate things for the viewer, there are several groups, not just one group. So you see snippets of video from each group without warning that you've changed to a different group.
Casting people who look similar was also a less than brilliant move.
Despite the endless poor film making choices, you will be able to keep track of the main plot line. I can't even give them credit for that because it's so transparent. As the box cover says: "The survivors of the zombie plague face something worse than the zombies." Ok, it doesn't say that exactly as I don't remember the exact wording, but that's basically it. How does one not see where that is going?
I can only recommend this to film makers who want to see an example of what not to do.
3 out of 10.