Director: Wesley Spangler
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie
Plot:
In the midst of a zombie apocalypse, residents and survivors of a small town are forced to band together to stop them only to be continually impeded by an alpha female leading them into battle, eventually bringing an infected-but-unturned zombie soldier to fight them off and save everyone.
Review:
This was a rather fun indie zombie feature. One of the brighter aspects here is the film's propensity for diving straight into the fire with the outbreak being seen from the outset with very little warning. As this jumps immediately into the fray forgoing any kind of standard setup with the civilians stuck in the situation, how the virus spread, or how to stop the rampaging creatures in favor of them being there and forced to deal with them, everything here has a fine rapid pace to the action as it's focused quite nicely on getting the creatures out into the town. While also providing enough of a backstory on the nature of the zombie queen and the military's efforts to stop them now that they're out, this is all fun enough and works decently in this kind of effort.
That rapid pace also comes about through the high-energy and somewhat silly zombie action at the forefront of the film. With the initial outbreak being shown from the start offering numerous swarming scenes, ambush encounters, and confrontations dealing with trying to stop the creatures, there are quite a lot of cheesy, silly encounters here that continue on with the introduction of the infected fighting to stop them. The inherent cheesiness of the confrontations and apparent lack of budget to allow for any kind of grandiose spectacle beyond the guerilla-style filmmaking that keeps everything going but is all plainly obvious about what's going on which may or may not be a massive drawback for some. Still, there's enough going on here to have some likable elements.
There are some features that bring it down. Outside of the aforementioned low-budget stylings here, the main drawback is the seemingly random and disjointed storyline that is so loosely connected it's hard to tell what's going on. While going straight into the outbreak and resulting chaos that overruns the town, it tends to introduce people into the story at will who don't have much context for what's going on as it shifts around to different storylines being attempted. This creates a somewhat jarring and disorganized approach that furthers the guerilla-style approach even more with the lack of focus being quite odd to get into. It's all mainly for personal preference as the type of scenes here are quite prominent in this genre but can quite easily be a detriment for those in the wrong mindset.
Overview: ***/5
An immensely silly and cheesy low-budget genre effort, you're mileage for this kind of film will rest predominantly on the type of tolerance you have for the origins of this type of film. Those who can handle this type of indie fare or are the most devout, hardcore zombie genre fans will be the main ones to appreciate this one while most others who don't appreciate or enjoy these factors should heed caution.
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