Director: Lars Damoiseaux
Year: 2020
Country: Belgium
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Arriving at a shady Eastern European clinic, a man joining his girlfriend and her mother for a routine procedure at the site comes to find a zombie outbreak has occurred at the area and traps everyone inside forcing them and a small group of survivors to try to get out alive without being killed by the creatures.
Review:
This one was a rather fun and enjoyable effort. Among the better aspects featured here is a rather enjoyable setup from the storyline that gives this some great work. The innocuousness of arriving at the facility and seeing all the red flags about the location, from the secretive staff to the unethical performance practices and general air of money-sucking practices they seem to set up for, gets played up here throughout the first half. This makes their trepidation all the more logical and builds up to the danger in the building quite nicely.
There’s also a lot to like once that pays off with the zombie attacks. From the innocent discovery that lets the original zombie loose, there’s plenty of gory fun with them overrunning the surgery floor causing tons of panic with the way the patients continually running afoul of the creatures. The scenes of encounters they have trying to get out, which consist of both separated and group encounters as well as the confrontations from the survivors that are shown throughout the hospital, and with some fantastic make-up work on the zombie along with practical gore gags and running zombies has some likable qualities.
The other enjoyable aspect here is the rather fun comedy on display, making this one fun and light-hearted alongside the great zombie action. The idea of flipping the idea of the nominal action hero from a resourceful, flawless man of action into a queasy, clumsy klutz who genuinely tries to do the right thing yet fails through his own general ineffective nature provides some great laughs here. Some of the other characters are genuinely funny with their remarks about the situation which adds some nice chuckles as well, making for a lot to really enjoy here.
This one does have some issues involved. Among the main flaws is a rambling and confused final half that doesn’t seem to have any point. The character motivations and decision-making points in this section seem rather random and haphazard, from making others go through various exercises when they knew it was foolhardy all along, running headfirst into a military firing squad containing the issue without warning them or the decision to trap them underground for selfish reasons which just doesn’t seem to be filled with natural choices. As well as the occasionally awful CGI blood-splatter that’s not necessary, these are all that’s wrong here.
Overview: ****.5/5
A generally fun and enjoyable violent zombie effort that has a nice it of fun as well, there’s more than enough here to hold this one up over its minor flaws. This will really appeal to fans of zombie films or those looking for a light, easy genre effort while those burned out on zombie effort or not into these should heed caution.
This review ran as part of our remote coverage of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival. Click the banner below to check out more of our coverage:
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