baphythegoat
I am both a zombie film fan (A la Romero, and Simon Pegg) and an animation buff. I'm also fairly picky. City of Rott seems to have been someone's kitchen sink project that managed to get enough distribution to find it's charmingly awkward way into my local Hollywood Video. I rented it with fairly low expectations, and wasn't terribly disappointed. When I looked at the box in the store, I guessed that C.o.R would be quirky, at times repetitive, uneven, and (shudder) possibly entirely Flash animation. It turns out I wan't terribly off base in my assessment (all points)...The Good: It was great to see an angry, kooky "elderly" protagonist. There was enough in the way of Zombie-buff in-jokes (read the signs in the background- there's as much going on there at times as in the foreground) and silly, ham-handed social commentary to give me a few good giggles. I found it worth a watch. The Bad: Man... 77minutes of average quality Flash-based animation...one (just one) interesting character...ooh..uhh... hmmm... did I mention the 77 minutes of quirky flash animation? A cludgy script with a few really brylllunt moments...could have said it better in under an hour.... crunchy industrial techno score ground out relentlessly until the bitter end...My Verdict: Again... for fans of Zombiedom, worth 1 watch.
Matt_Layden
An elderly man and his trusty walker go in to City of Rott looking for some new slippers. There's only one problem, the city is overrun by blood thirsty zombies. What follows is a gore hounds dream, animation style.What made me watch City of Rott? Well, I was attracted to it by it's cover. A cartoon zombie flick with it's main star wielding a walker. I was kind of reminded of Bubba Ho-Tep, in which the Kinf of Rock and Roll fought against the King of The Dead. I have never heard of COR, but being a fan of horror films, and being intrigued by the cover art, which is unfortunately one of it's few highlights, I bought the flick and watched it immediately. There are some elements in COr that work, but the are few and far between, much of it a a repetitive mess. Then again, what can you expect from a film that was made entirely by one man.Frank Sudol or "FSudol" brings us a film that he wrote, directed, animated, edited, composed, produced, so on and so forth. With it's Flash like animated style, that one would find on such web-sties like "newgrounds" it stands out among other animated films, but it's unique style may put off a lot of viewers who aren't really ready for the basic animated style. Although the detail on the character are quite good and comedic. I was surprised with the variations of zombies that I found in COR, I was expecting the same face to pop up every now and then.The main character, Fred, is alone, unarmed and going insane. Looking for a pair of slippers may sound humorous, but it wears thin after the film starts. After a few chuckles here or there, the rest of the film is not really all that funny. With the comedy not working in this film, there is really only one more thing that it can rely on. It's the gore, and the film features plenty of it.The unrated COR features an abundant amount of blood and gore. Not only do zombies get shot in the head, but they get impaled with spikes, ran over by cars and decapitated by...yup you guessed it, Fred's walker. Fred uses his trusty friend as a weapon to kill the undead. Along with Fred there is a nurse, who quickly becomes a zombie, a random civilian with guns to randomly shoot zombies and another old man, who coincidentally carries the cure to being a zombie.These aren't your regular day to day zombies, this time it's parasitic worms that infest the decaying bodies. It's a new way to spin the zombie tale that could work for a feature film, but here it doesn't seem to flow very well. COR would work very well as a short, but it drags on way too long and crawls pass the finish line. After Fred gets bitten by the zombies the film becomes rather pointless. The only reason for the film to go on like this is for Fred to get the cure, so you know what will happen. Basically the entire film is watching cartoon character beat the living crap out of these zombies. While it is all in good fun, much like the final scene in Dead-Alive. It becomes repetitive in the first 30 minutes, and you are asking yourself if anything new will ever come up.I will give Frank Sudol credit for it being a one man show, it has great blood and guts and a unique animation style that could work as a short film, but COR becomes very boring, very fast. Frank, get more people on the same crew with you, put more time into the production, more then one year, and then come back with a film that will knock our socks off. There is potential here, but it's taken in the wrong direction. Which is a shame, cause the cover art is really kick ass.
magic-ball
"City of Rott" is an independent animated zombie movie which (if Google is any indication) is an extended version of an online movie of the same name.As you'd expect from an indie film, production values are limited. The animation takes a while to get used to. The music is repetitive and the voices aren't great. All of this comes with the territory, I suppose. In fact, the entire movie was done by a single guy - Frank Sudol. While the effort can be lauded, and its humble origins to DVD is impressive, it can't make up for the overall lack of quality. As per most zombie movies, it's rather bleak and cynical. The main character is an apparently senile geriatric named Fred who talks to his walker (which apparently talks back). Fred is motivated, despite the unfurling apocalypse, to find a comfortable pair of new shoes.The movie's biggest weakness is that even at 77 minutes, it's too long. There's just so much that didn't need to be in it. It's boring. I'm a fan of the genre and I couldn't even bear to sit through it in its entirety. There is gore, and it is a liberal amount. Unortunately, they're the same boring gorefests over and over again. Even the movie breaks the fourth wall about this; in one zombie-killing sequence Fred says "Hey, didn't I kill you before?". Inbetween these fights Fred talks to his walker and and roams the streets aimlessly looking for shoes. In a few of these "plot" sequences, there is candid discussion of deeper concepts such as struggling against inevitability and Fred's shortsightedness, but these are fleeting and don't make a lasting impression. I suppose the shortsighted journey for comfort in the setting of a larger crisis might serve as a parallel for modern life, but it's probably just seeing too much into it.If you want to see unapologetically tasteless zombie violence with a unique presentation, don't mind a heavy dose of tedium, and happen to see it somewhere, you might want to rent. Otherwise, stay far, far, away.
jordan-007
Do you like zombie movies with lots of gore? Do like weird animated movies? This little zombie flick may still not be for you. There will be a select little group of people that will "get" this movie, and to those lucky people it will be awesome. Once I got into it I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Instead of the usual frantic group of people running for their lives you have one senile old man and his walker looking for a pair of shoes. Don't get me wrong there are plenty of zombies, and plenty of bloodshed. Thats definitely what makes this film unique. If your looking for a way different take on zombie film then this flick just might be for you!