Director: Ken Brewer, Johnny Lektrik, John Ward
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Zombie; Anthology
Plot:
In the middle of a town-wide crime wave, various individuals manage to come across a gruesome zombie outbreak in their city that affects not only their plans but their attempt at living and forces them to deal with the situation in their own manners.
Review:
This was a rather fun and enjoyable indie zombie anthology feature. What works really well here is the highly enjoyable setup that approaches the entire concept of a zombie outbreak in this anthology-style format. Taking on isolated segments of the outbreak with their own individual storyline and setup that allows the film to skip around the city showing how various individuals around the city are able to deal with the outbreak, initially starting with the field reporter encountering the locals and finding the first signs of the outbreak or the stoners who are too high to be bothered by anything else going on around them which leaves them open to attack once they encounter the bitten individual. The means through which it cuts across to the various individuals in their own stories give this a fun interconnected central setup.
The other plus of this type of approach is the film’s highly effective sense of indie action scenes involving confrontations with the zombies in various locales. With the scenes shifting from an alleyway of a major city to an apartment complex, a suburban house holding strange secrets, a bachelorette party on the outskirts of the city, and finally to a city park located within the area, the attacks here are generally effective setups featuring the creatures showing up suddenly to impede someone’s own story or featuring an infected individual turning on others to start the chaos. This usually comes with an assortment of solid indie-style gore gags and effects work that provides some fun to be had as the story of the outbreak is built through these features. Keeping this one moving along nicely due to always focusing on a new segment, there’s quite a lot to really enjoy with this one.
There are some factors here that bring this one down. Among the main drawbacks of this one is that the anthology format present means that it takes quite a while to get a hang of the individual characters within here. Switching to the isolated characters without any throughline here to keep track of everyone and what’s going on. Since most of the time the characters don’t even get names since it’s usually focused on the lived-in universe around the town, incidents involving the stoners living together in their apartment or the woman who arrives at the house with the zombies being held for study has little context for what’s happening so their purpose and connection with what’s going on leaves this somewhat stilted. That also leaves us with no explanation for the outbreak or how to stop it, and with the usual assortment of low-budget indie features that are shown off frequently manage to bring this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
An overall fun anthology zombie effort with quite a lot to like about it, this indie feature manages to remain quite likable even with a few minor drawbacks holding it down just slightly. Those that enjoy this type of indie feature, don’t mind low-budget zombie efforts, or are fans of the creative crew will have some fun here while only those that don’t enjoy any of those factors should heed caution.
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