Director: Jim O'Rear
Year: 2008
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie
Plot:
Setting up a local attraction, a group of friends turning an abandoned barn into a haunted house where a gangsters’ henchmen hide a cache of drugs, and when they arrive to reclaim it find that an unfortunate side effect is turning people in zombies forcing the groups to band together to survive.
Review:
This one ended up being quite the fun, campy effort. One of the strongest elements to be found here is the enjoyable silly plotline that amps up the cheese incredibly well. The idea of taking the drugs and money to the barn only to have the kids stumble upon it while setting up a cheesy local haunted house in the area which manages to seem goofy enough without the zombie plotline. The early scenes of the group building the haunted house props, full of fake spider webs, severed limbs, animatronic monsters and rubber monster mask, offer the kind of wholly camp attitude that meshes together with the arrival of the zombies to create a nicely cheesy atmosphere.
That leads to the extremely silly and over-the-top action featured throughout here. This is a rather enjoyable mixture of martial arts and swarming zombie sequences that manage plenty to like here. The martial arts scenes are rather enjoyable, featuring far more knowledgeable and capable performers as the fluidity featured in the choreography is incredibly impressive, managing to make the gang brawl in the opening rather exciting to open a zombie film with that kind of hard-hitting action. Likewise, the two big brawls featuring these performing engaging in combat with the zombies are just as much fun as the slick multi-performer choreography and ludicrous concept of fighting zombies with kung-fu creates some great action set-pieces amongst the cheese.
The big zombie action manages to work off a lot of enjoyable aspects. From the transformation and attack in the friends’ house on his parents to the group driving to the location and the initial attack on the farm where everyone is together for the first time, this one works plenty of fun low-budget indie style zombie action. Featuring the idea of running zombies taking them out by outnumbering the group who are more concerned with their own welfare than getting out alive, these are a lot of fun as the cheesy nature gets to enhance these scenes. Alongside decent gore and zombie make-up for this type of film, the film gets really enjoyable when it matters.
There are some minor flaws here. The biggest issue is the completely unrealistic subplot running throughout the second half where the lead villain is more concerned with his drugs than the zombies at hand. This setup would never come close to happening as the overwhelming threat of the ever-increasing horde would render their quest for the drugs a lost cause and an escape plan to start again a more realistic setup, especially when it becomes obvious that him being actively concerned with recovering drugs was putting them but his own men in jeopardy. The corny action and setup might be a bit too much for some but that’s the tone and style of the film which should be clear going in, making these the film’s lone flaws.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally fun and enjoyable cheesy indie-zombie effort that doesn’t have too much wrong in this kind of style, there’s much more to like here than expected as the few flaws found here are not only expected here, but obvious going in. Those that are mindful of those issues and appreciate low-budget indie efforts will find much to like here while viewers that aren’t into this style will be quite put off by what’s on display.
Comments
Post a Comment