Blood, guts and gore are not the only things that make a horror. Granted they are the first things you think of when you hear the genre, but to make a good scary movie so much more needs to be taken in to consideration.
While on holiday I came across a British made zombie film. Unfortunately I bought it. One rainy day, I decided to give the churches and castles a rest so, I lit the fire, got a packet of peanut puffs and snuggled down under a blanket ready for a good old horror.
It was a cheap film but I thought, theres not much you can get wrong with a horror, is there? The answer is 'Yes', to be honest, this film: 'Night of the living dead resurrection' got very little right, when I say very little I mean nothing at all.
I feel at this point I should stop, fearing that James Plumb, the film maker, may be upset by my criticism. But I won't, you see I am in the middle of France, it's raining, and cold, this film was meant to be today's saving grace, it made it worse. In fact, it's so bad I'm looking forward to my run to the local (mile away) village, in the rain, to get some 'lait et du pain', the most mundane groceries ever.
To start, the camera work and sound is appalling. You can hardly hear the lines through the tin sound, at one point you hear quiet talking in the background thats not even supposed to be there. The camera work is jumpy, twisty, upside down and badly angled. The overall look and sound is cheap. I wouldn't mind if it was accidental, but you could tell lots of the shots were done in an attempt to be 'artistic'. Well, it's not artistic, quite frankly it's rubbish, confusing and pointless when it's not done properly.
It's not big and it's not clever to have a follow view of someone's bottom walking up the stairs or an upside down and back to front view of someone laying on a bed. These shots need to be done at the right time, to coincide with the script, in order to create fear and anticipation within the audience. They need to have purpose not just be random, for instance, a follow view should be done when someone is spying, creeping up on, or hiding from the person in shot, usually their back. An upside down or spinning shot should be used, again, if the person in shot is feeling confused or disorientated. These convey the same emotion to the audience in order to create a bond between them and the character, usually the protagonist.
That is another thing this film didn't have, character, audience empathy. At no point did I identify with any characters. It jumped through too many. There wasn't a chance to bond with any and so, to be honest, I didn't care if any of them lived nor died, or got eaten alive. It started with a wimpy man being harassed by some welsh yobs, who i thought were in their late twenties, early thirties but later it transpired they were young teens that apparently needed someone to buy them alcohol, well I wouldn't have asked for I.D. Anyway the man enters the shop and low and behold their all zombies. At this point the film could still be good maybe this guy will man up and become a hero...NO he gets bitten.
He then turns, you know this by the ice blue contacts, blood pouring from the mouth and usual zombie slow shuffling on the side of the feet, groaning walk. He leaves the shop and bites the yobs, great more characters I didn't get time to identify with. Then another man randomly stops his car, gets out and yells "get away he has been bitten". The yobs don't heed his warning and so he gets back in to his car and drives off with us, the audience by his side. He drives down, of course, deserted country lanes and rings someone to tell them he is coming to get them. HA! you think, he is the protagonist and he is going to save someone, NO he gets his brains blown out by some welsh man through the letterbox. I should have known, he was the tocan black man in he movie, bound to die.
So now were stuck with some welsh family which in better circumstances would have been on the Jeremy Kyle show. A mum and dad, an emo Justin Bieber lookalike boy, who has been bitten, an old man spurting 'the end of the world lines' who has also been bitten, a pregnant woman and her husband who is sleeping with her teenage sister.
The rest of the film is them, in a house, trying to survive with an emo and old man locked in rooms rattling on wooden doors while zombies approach. Ahhhh but that's not all, now a new group emerge. A group of yobs. These are fixed on devastation and destruction, killing everyone in their way, for no reason at all zombified or not, even running over the father with his own car, while spurting out game references "this is like COD" and "lets go all world of warfare on his arse". Later when the sun rises and everyone is dead yet another group appear shooting zombies and dressed in army camo. They find a survivor and end the film with the line "put her in the rape van".
One may argue that this film is trying to show the end of humanity in present day and this can be blamed on the desensitisation of children through the media? But I feel that would be giving this film to more consideration than it deserves. It's unclear just like the entire story line. There is no back story to the family or the outbreak or anything. But there is lots of badly shot, terribly lit, off colour, intestine eating.
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