John Cairns
This is one of those films that kept me thinking for quite a while after watching it. It was less the story, characters and more the structure of the film i liked. Although there is a through-line to the story, I enjoyed the way it was arranged in vignettes, suddenly cutting to different places where survivors were beset by these very unique zombies and their more unique handlers. Honestly I enjoyed these survivor attack stories more than the main story. Due to this structure, it develops such a dreamlike quality after a while, with a detached sense of time and place.The effects of the film reminded me so much of the Fulci zombie films. Watching this was like a master class in creating those kinds of gruesome effects. I never got tired of seeing the live action gore and trying to figure out how the special effects artist made them.At first the dialogue felt too detached and odd, but it gradually grew on me in the same way Hal Hartley's dialogue does. Director-wise it was a cool mash-up of Hartley with extremely gory Fulci spicing up the entire thing. For an indie film the soundtrack was also quite good. The impacts and other sounds were very visceral (pun intended). Overall I enjoyed this indie film for it's dream-like quality the most, despite the disjointed pacing that comes with most indie films.
Mark Ritsen
I'll be honest. I didn't think this would be good *at all* especially after reading some reviews on here but boy was I wrong. The effects are amazing and the zombies are downright disturbing. I can see how the acting would annoy some but you always get a lot of flashbacks to keep it interesting and those black figures... creepy stuff.Looks like there are multiple versions out there, which must be why some people are trashing it. I saw the so-called "Ultimate Cut" and it was pretty gnarly. This one tall creature has a belt of human heads and you get to see him add more to his collection. That's awesome.Bottom line: if you like horror, you'll like this.
Michael Riley
I was suggested this movie by its director. Initially, I wanted to view this for a full-fledged review for a pop culture website, but unfortunately did not have the time. However, I have watched the movie, and I've given it a rating of 9/10. With so many movies resorting to CGI as a crutch (not all movies, mind you; movies where effects could be done practically), it is particularly refreshing to see a movie where the effects in it are entirely practical.The movie is not perfect by any means, but it gets right what it needed to get right. With a bigger budget, this could be a horror movie classic in the making or possibly a sleeper hit. Very happy to see a horror movie that doesn't fall into the old tired zombie/vampire shtick and incorporates elements of different kinds of horror. I highly recommend checking this one out.
Anthony Robu
People need to realize what starter indie films are all about before jumping over the line and discrediting certain diamond in the rough gems. Watched the movie last night, it loaded and played just fine. Image quality wasn't bad either, little choppy in a couple spots. The storyline, dialogue, music score were all done very well for such low budget. The special FX were pretty good and well needed in this day and age of CGI overkill. I think it could have really benefited from a stunt coordinator for the sword fighting scenes, they seemed very repetitive especially with the cam cutaway with every slashing move. Again a low budget downfall. The main actor guy,(Carey MacLaren) was pretty terrible. His acting and the way he timed his lines kind of did a lot of hurt. Sometimes he ran his lines together too fast, and sometimes it was too drawn out. The emotion he tried to show didn't come through naturally and seemed very forced, making it look like just overall terrible acting. The supporting lady wasn't bad at all. She kinda carried the main guy along acting wise. I think with a better lead actor this movie would have had a much greater impact (not to mention someone that looked like it wasn't the first time they had ever picked up a sword, though they had "been practicing since they were a little kid") would have helped the overall flow and emotional feel to the entire story. All in all a good flick, by far not the worst low budget I've seen. Nice camera work, so glad to finally see an apocalypse with out the stupid shaky handy cam feel!!! Too much of that nowadays. The flash away during every sword and gun scene seemed to take away a little from the flow of the fight. I'm sure that had a lot to do with budget and not being able to show the direct slice or gun impact shot all in one screen frame. For what its worth I liked it, would love to see it re-done with a decent budget to get deeper into it! Best of luck in the dog-eat-dog film industry!!