Category: Review

A Marine Story

  By

★★½
“Topples over from worthy into over-earnest.”

marineLet me start with the Amazon synopsis, since this explains what it’s doing here: “Dreya Weber stars as Alex, a decorated Marine officer who is unexpectedly discharged from her wartime duty. Returning to her conservative home town she agrees to coach and counsel the precocious teen rebel Saffron (Paris Pickard). Alex is the no-nonsense role model and authority figure that Saffron needs, and in true Karate Kid style she inspires the young woman s transition from slacker to boot camp-ready Marine recruit. But as Saffron is finally finding the strength to grow up, Alex must find new courage to face her own demons.” While not technically incorrect in any detail, it’s probably significant that it makes absolutely no mention of a very significant plot element, which impacts just about all other aspects of the story. Alex was kicked out of the Marines for being a lesbian.

While knowing that likely would not have impacted my selection of the film, I would have to say the heavy emphasis placed on it likely did detract from my enjoyment. Not, I should stress, for the gay angle. The issue would be exactly the same if the lead character had been heterosexual, and defined to an equal degree by her relationships, because that’s the kind of thing I expect from a soap-opera character, rather than an action heroine. It’s clear the topic of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is a subject about which both director and star felt passionately, and it’s perhaps unfortunate (for the film, rather than those affected by it!) the policy was revoked by the US government shortly after the movie’s release, rendering it a lot of well-intentioned hand-wringing about not much, from a 2016 perspective.

The rest of this isn’t bad, although the ease with which Saffron is turned around by Alex is remarkable, suggesting that a stint in boot camp is just the cure all America’s disaffected youth requires. The synopsis does nail this as in “True Karate Kid style”, being roughly as plausible. But I do have to say, Weber completely nails the Marine thing, both in well-muscled physical appearance – and, perhaps more importantly, the attitude of quiet, coiled energy and absolutely confidence in her own abilities. Yet there’s also a streak of aggression, and some which is perfect for a soldier, yet less compatible with civilian life, and causes no shortage of issues, especially when combined with Alex’s tendency to react first. There’s likely enough meat there for a story, without having to add the sexual politics angle which, as noted above, has not dated particularly well, and to be honest, becomes moral overkill before the final credits roll – complete with another nugget of social justice. No, the topic isn’t the problem here: it’s the heavy-handed treatment.

Dir: Ned Farr
Star: Dreya Weber, Paris P. Pickard, Christine Mourad, Anthony Michael Jones

Angel’s Bounty

  By

★★
“More double-blank domino, than a double-six”

angelsbountyHaving been involved in low-budget feature films (on both sides of the camera), I’m very much aware of how much dedication and hard work it takes to bring a feature to the screen. I tend to try and cut them slack where possible, especially when they’re in our genre. Unfortunately, the results here aren’t actually very good, and I struggled to stay focused on the film for much of the running time.

The heroine is Angel Sommers (Springer), a bounty hunter with dreams of opening a “doggie daycare” business in Los Angeles. Her chance comes when she gets notice of a fugitive called Tommy Briggs (Giuliotti), with a sizable reward on his head. And there’s a personal element too, for Briggs was involved in the death of Angel’s father, also a bounty-hunter, when she was a young girl. The capture of Briggs goes relatively smoothly. It’s the journey back that’s the problem, for it turns out his Russian ex-wife, Isabelle (Chris Stordahl) has her greedy eyes on Tommy’s life-insurance. To this end, she has hired a couple of bumbling assassins, who are intent on making sure he doesn’t make it into custody alive. If Angel gets in the way, that’s her problem.

In other words: nothing here you haven’t seen before. Right down to the bickering between the assassins about Doritos, which sounds like something from a first draft of a Tarantino movie, this is a warmed-over hodge-podge of over-familiar concepts and tropes. Curiously though, Angel is not particularly interested in revenge against the man who killed her father. You’d think there’d be a good deal more heat generated by that long-held grudge, yet the relationship remains almost defiantly low-key. The production also makes almost all the mistakes made by low-budget films. [I know, because we’ve made ’em.] Murky sound? Check. Supporting cast of enthusiastic amateurs? Check. Pointless cameo by a local band, in which the director may well have friends? Check: Guns of Nevada here.

There are occasional scenes that work. A nice one has Angel interacting with a husband and wife couple who run a motel. And I actually liked Springer, who brings an entirely appropriate, world-weary quality. However, the threat level of the hitmen is so feeble, there’s not a shred of excitement to be had. Which would be okay if the aim was comedy, except there’s even less mirth to be found here, than excitement. There’s also needless diversion in the shape of Angel’s cronies, who add nothing of significance to the entire production. Their roles should have been excised entirely, and the freed-up running time used to add depth to Angel, or her relationship with Tommy, the latter existing only because the plot demands it.

While it’s clear Fleming and Springer have a love for the genre, that isn’t enough to salvage this. And a demerit for apparent ballot-box stuffing on Amazon. A suspicious number of the glowing five-star reviews, are from people who have never reviewed anything else…

Dir: Lee Fleming
Star: Kristen Springer, J.P. Giuliotti, Alastair Bayardo, Travis Gray

We Are Monsters

  By

★★
“Swedish grindhouse: Some assembly apparently required.”

wearemonstersThe rape-revenge genre is a problematic one. Done properly, it can be awesome, and pack a real wallop. See Ms. 45, or Thriller: A Cruel Picture for examples where the makers got it right. But there are an awful lot of mis-steps possible on the way. Unfortunately, this proves the point, mostly by being remarkably… Well, “bland” is probably appropriate, and is also damning criticism. For these kind of movies should be offensive, because rape is. If its depiction isn’t hard for the viewer to watch, you’re not doing it right. On that basis, the makers here definitely get it wrong.

Emma (Oldenburg) is on a business trip, in her role as a PR advisor, when she gets in the wrong taxi. She regains consciousness, tied up in a remote cabin. There, she’s at utterly at the mercy of savvy psychopath Jim (Ralph Beck), and his simpleton sidekick, Pete (Andersson). It soon becomes clear she is not their first victim. And also, that they have no compunction about disposing of their left-overs. That’s just the start of Emma’s descent into hell, which is a necessary component of the genre. To be followed by her turning the tables and subjecting her attackers to equal brutality, to the cheers of the audience. In theory, anyway.

The first off-putting element is, it’s supposedly set in America, yet clearly isn’t, with accents roughly as convincing as Inspector Clouseau [Emma, bizarrely, is supposedly Australian – one presumes that was the only accent Oldenburg could do!]. There’s no reason beyond crass commercialism, why its location couldn’t be the real one, of Sweden. Then we get to the downswing, and there’s no emotional impact at all. We’re given no reason to care about Emma, except that she’s the victim, nor any reason to hate Jim and Pete, save they’re the perpetrators. Now, we don’t need any more reason, but it’s appallingly lazy film-making to rely on such a simply dynamic. The series of attacks are shot in such a superficial way they’re frankly boring, when they should leave the viewer shaken and stirred.

There’s also a thread where Pete spends a lot of time watching slasher films. If there’s an intended moral there, it’s a remarkably hypocritical one, given the genre in which this firmly operates. Eventually, after an aborted escape attempt or two, the inevitable happens. The makers do at least get that right, with Emma inflicting some truly brutal revenge, including one scene I defy any man to watch without squirming. Yet, the ineffective nature of what has gone before robs the revenge of any significant impact, and it instead falls into the category of “too little, too late.” Having shallowly enjoyed the directors’ previous effort, the “spam in a cabin” film Wither, their attempt here to recapture the spirit of the grindhouse era was severely disappointing.

Dir: Sonny Laguna, Tommy Wiklund
Star: Hanna Oldenburg, Torbjörn Andersson, Ralf Beck, Niki Nordenskjöld

Into the Forest

  By

★★½
“After the apocalypse, life will be… kinda dull, actually.”

intotheforestNell (Page) and Eva (Wood) are sisters, living in a house deep in the woods with their father (Rennie). Nell is studying for her SATs, Evan is working towards a dance audition, until all plans are interrupted by a catastrophic power outage which leaves the entire country without electricity. Fortunately, they are almost self-sufficient, capable of living off the land as far as food and heat is concerned, even if the lack of power and very limited fuel forces some significant changes in lifestyle: Eva is reduced to practicing her dance routine to the relentless tick of a metronome, for instance. But when the women are thrown entirely onto their own resources, life becomes tougher, and various hard questions have to be answered, about whether to stay in their remote, apparently fairly safe location, or follow the reports suggesting that the Eastern seaboard may slowly be getting back to normal.

It’s nowhere as exciting as your typically post-apocalyptic scenario, though this perhaps has a greater ring of plausibility to it than the usual Mad Max-iness. When the world falls apart, it’s more likely to be with a whimper than a scream. That said: I don’t know who built their home, since it falls into complete dilapidation in less than a year, with a roof that starts leaking like a sieve in just a couple of months. What is it made of? Papier-mache? [I’m perhaps biased here, since the house I grew up in is over 200 years old, and somehow, still stands] This is likely a narrative conceit, necessary to force the heroines out of their survival-based inertia, which occupies the majority of the film. That angle is one of the disappointing areas: they’re reactive, rather than pro-active. If left entirely to their own devices, this might have ended up as little more than 100 minutes of the sisters gathering berries.

It does manage to go beyond that, mostly thanks to the performances of Page and Wood, who have a natural chemistry that feels authentic. They bicker like sisters, and fight like sisters, yet also show that when the chips are down, blood is thicker than water. This is demonstrated with the unexpected appearance of Nell’s boyfriend (Minghella), though he serves little other purpose before walking out of the film’s scope again. Page is also far too old these days to be a convincing high-school student: Juno was the best part of a decade ago now, and she wasn’t in her teens even when that came out. There is something to be said for a more character-driven apocalypse, one which consists of more than a steady stream of threats to be violently countered. However, this likely tilts the balance too far the other direction, and ends up with something too introverted and navel-gazing to be interesting.

Dir: Patricia Rozema
Star: Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, Max Minghella, Callum Keith Rennie

Hunterwali

  By

★★½
“Oh, God. Where to start….”

hunterwaliIt’s through this film that I backed into my discovery of early Bollywood star, Fearless Nadia. For doing some post-view Googling, I realized this 1988 Pakistani film is actually inspired by an Indian one of the same name, from more than 50 years earlier. That’s an entirely different rabbit-hole however: let’s consider this on its own, highly psychotronic merits.

The plot concerns two sisters, Bano and Bali (Anjuman), the latter also known as Hunterwali. Bano is demure and quiet, Bali… is not. In fact, she’s a totally wild child by local standards. Mind you, local standards apparently also involve killing girls who have the temerity to want to marry someone of their own choice. Still, there are three suitors for Bali’s hand. #1 is Umri, a warrior type, who tames her horse. However, after taking vengeance on the man who kills Umri’s entire clan, he is forced to become an outlaw. Potential husband #2 is the son of a family friend, who is her father’s choice. He is entirely useless and can be ignored, since he is present largely for comic-relief.

Finally, there’s Shahreyar, he helps rescue Hunterwali from attack by a gang. However, turns out that’s a ruse to gain her confidence. When she elopes with him, he takes her to a seedy cave – we know it’s seedy, because it has posters of Madonna and Brooke Shields on the wall! – and assaults her, along with the rest of the gang. The disgrace this brings to the family, causes Hunterwali’s dad to kill himself. In the fracas, Bano is also killed, but Bali takes the identity of her sister, who is married to the local police commander. This allows her to go out on vigilante missions, masked and with her whip, to hunt down the perps. She’s not messing around either: she shoots their eyes out and hangs them from the cave roof. While she eventually works her way up the chain to Shahreyar, he has an entire new gang. Fortunately, she has the help of Umri. And her horse. And her dog.

This has not dated well. Indeed, I suspect this wasn’t very good, even for the time – 1988 was the year Hollywood gave us Die Hard. The thing about the Fearless Nadia films is they’re not incomparable to what Hollywood was making at the time. You can’t say the same about this, which has all the technical quality of a bad 50’s B-movie. The director’s sole cinematic trick is the snap zoom, which is used so often it becomes a surreal joke, as does the single horse noise apparently available to the foley team. Yet there’s a loopy energy, and Anjuman has screen presence, which means the two and a half hours certainly do not drag. If you’re looking for a bizarre combination of Zorro with a musical version of I Spit on Your Grave,  also including a dog riding to the rescue of its owner on the back of a horse, the entire thing is on YouTube. Just don’t say, I didn’t warn you…

Dir: Iqbal Kashmiri
Star: Anjuman, Sultan Rahi, Mustafa Qureshi, Jameel Babar

Miss Frontier Mail

  By

★★★
“Unquestionably dated, yet still a pioneer,”

frontiermailIt has now been more than eighty years since this was released. It’s important to bear this in mind, because what you have here, is very much a product of its time and place – 1936 and Bollywood, respectively. That said, it possesses a far feistier heroine than anything coming out of Hollywood at that point. Indeed, you’d probably have to wait over 35 years, until Pam Grier showed up in the seventies, to find someone comparable to the characters portrayed by an Australian actress, known in India as “Fearless Nadia”. There’s more info on Fearless Nadia elsewhere, and you might want to start there, since background is likely near-essential to appreciating her movies.

This entry has her playing Savita, the daughter of a station master who is accused of murdering his deputy, a crime actually carried out by a gang of railway robbers that have been terrorizing the area, under their anonymous master, “Signal X”. Savita seeks to clear her father’s name, initially with the help of an informant inside the gang, who had been helped by the station master. But even after Signal X kills the informant, she continues to investigate them, seeking to expose his identity. Turns out the plan is to destroy the railway network’s reputation on behalf of an airline company. This involves a terrorist campaign, including blowing up bridges and deliberately causing train crashes, and Savita is the only person who can stop him.

Let’s be clear. The fights here are awful. My daughter and her friend used to make little films in our garage when they were early teenagers. They had better brawls. It appears the sole guidance offered by the director was, “Okay, look like you’re fighting. Action!” The results resemble a drunken shoving match at a wedding more than anything. Still… For there’s one sequence where Nadia and the rest of the cast are doing it on top of a moving train, and you know it’s not doubles, green-screen or CGI. There, I don’t care what you’re doing, because I would be desperately clinging onto any relatively-fixed point. There might also be whimpering involved. This cheerful and complete disregard for personal safety, along with some of the slapstick elements, feels inspired by the silent works of Harold Lloyd, etc.

This is a real hodge-podge with no consistent tone. Action rubs shoulders with romance, and drama with juvenile comedy. There’s a reason one supporting character is listed in the credits as “champion banana eater”, and I didn’t even mention the entirely gratuitous sequence of Savita weightlifting. At 143 minutes, it’s likely a good half-hour too long; interesting to see, both in that and the shoehorning in of musical numbers, elements that remain common to many contemporary Bollywood films. Yet, once your modern eyes adapt a bit to the approach, it remains entertaining, and remarkably forward-thinking. Virtually the only competent member of Signal X’s gang, Gulab (Gulshan), is also a woman, and while Savita does have a romantic interest, it’s handled well; she’s clearly more than his equal.

You could well argue that portrayals of women in Indian cinema have significantly regressed since this. Although the action elements do leave something to be desired for 21st-century viewers, and it all looks rather naive nowadays, that doesn’t detract from being decades ahead of its time.

Dir: Homi Wadia
Star: “Fearless Nadia”, Sayani Atish, Sardar Mansur, Gulshan

Roommate Wanted

  By

★★★
“Share today, gone tomorrow.”

If this concept sounds familiar, it should. Because this bears a strong resemblance to 2003 Japanese film 2LDK. Most obviously, both films are virtually single-location set pieces, in which the relationship between two room-mates devolve over the course of the feature, into a full-on brawl. Perhaps even more damningly, the original working title for this was 2BR/1BA – exactly like 2LDK, real-estate shorthand. [I wonder where the new title came from, since there’s no “wanted” at any point here] Yet there’s not even a “based on” credit to be seen, and no apparent acknowledgement of any inspiration. Hmm.

roomatewantedOn the other hand, if the plot has more than some similarities, the tone and approach are different here. There’s much more in the way of social commentary here, with the disparate personas of the two young women. [Indeed, so disparate, you have to question how the heck they ever ended up sharing a house] Jamie (Vega) is serious-minded, the kind of person who labels her food in the fridge, and seeking to pursue an academic career, but desperately needs funds to cover tuition at her chosen college. Dee (Grammer) is a party girl, whose days are filled with going to the gym and tanning, while her nights are filled with tequila and casual sex.

The culture clash between them is obvious, and provides most of the dramatic tension, as well as the more comedic aspects. For instance, Dee offers to make Jamie a smoothie, and on being reminded the latter is vegan, replies that she’ll use low-fat milk. Grammer nails the vapid, wannabe model-type perfectly, yet there’s an undercurrent of bitterness (particularly, as things turn out, toward Jamie and her perceived superiority) and you get the sense she’s smarter than she appears. Jamie has her own set of insecurities to deal with; as well as her tuition situation, she just broke up with her boyfriend after finding a thong in his car’s glove-box. Might Dee be able to shed some light on that?

Where this isn’t as good as 2LDK is in the mayhem. The Japanese version was, literally, no-holds barred, up to and including the use of a chainsaw. Here, there’s rather too much of the protagonists standing at a distance and lobbing things at one another. While the cynical social commentary and bite can make up some of the difference, this needs to amp up the brutality significantly, and include more surprises. When a point is made of a giant fish-tank in the living room, you know it’s only a matter of time before it’s going to come crashing down in a mini-tsunami of water, broken glass and flailing fishies.

Then there’s the ending. It could be the greatest ever. Or the worst ever. I’d listen to arguments, and could be convinced in either direction. It certainly is… a shocking ending. I should say no more than that. We will remember it, that’s for sure. But we’ll be more likely to watch 2LDK again, and an interest in doing so, is likely the main takeaway from this unofficial reboot.

Dir: Rob Margolies
Star: Alexa Vega, Spencer Grammer, Kathryn Morris, Bryan Dechart

Darkweb

  By

★½
“You smell the farmer!”

darkwebThe above is one of the lines of dialogue – rewound and checked on the closed-captions to confirm – which somehow got through the script, production and editing without correction, into the final film. This, folks, is cinema as a second language. The IMDB says “USA,” but that clearly isn’t the case. I’m going with Belgian, based on the names in the credits, but whoever it is should be sending a diplomatic apology. It seems vaguely located in Russia, based mostly on the mention of roubles as currency. However, it starts with a tank rampaging through the countryside. Why? Like so much here, it’s never explained.

The meat of the story has a group that kidnap people, then turn them loose for others to hunt down in a forest, streaming the results on the “dark web” side of the Internet [the film’s on-screen title inexplicably loses the space]. But they bite off more than they can chew when the kidnap Anna (Seul) and her brother. Holding him hostage, she’s set loose for the sport, only for infighting and the unexpected presence of a “ringer” among the hunters, to disrupt proceedings. Can she survive? Or will she just keep tripping over things and falling down?

Oh, dear. Despite the cover which promises an adequate quota of butt-kicking, what we get is much more like a bad level of Tomb Raider, with Anna jogging around the forest, as if looking for a goddamn key. Everyone in the film is incredibly dumb, failing miserably to utilize obvious chances for taking out their enemies, typically just leaving them unconscious instead. The dialogue is barely functional, while the two “names” who appear in minor roles – Oliver Gruner and, inexplicably, Danny Glover – have clearly fallen on hard times. The latter literally Skypes in his entire performance.  Much of what happens makes no sense, such as Anna’s sudden prowess with a longbow, which is used once then never mentioned again.

The film doesn’t look too bad; it’s nicely shot, and the wooded location offers a good range of terrain. The problems lie elsewhere, and are far more numerous. The title is more or less irrelevant, for starters, and the action sequences are generic and unimpressive. Few of the characters make any impression at all. If they’d given Anna some kind of back-story that could have made subsequent bad-assery plausible, that might have helped. Instead, she’s just a goat herder, and we’re given no reason to root for or care about her and her brother. But lengthy sequences of tank rampage? The film fits that in, no problem. The film doesn’t so much build to a climax as peter out. You likely won’t even think “Is that it?” so much as “Thank god that’s over.”

Dir: Bruno Vaussenat
Star: Nina Seul, Petra Silander, Sebastien Vandenberghe, Tristan Robin
a.k.a. Survival

High School Hellcats

  By

★★★
“Pussies galore.”

hellcatsSpectacularly dated in some ways, this also possesses comforting resonances with the present day: hey, teenagers were brattily rebellious in 1958 too. New girl Joyce (Lime) is lured in by the bad-girl posings of the Hellcats, led by Connie (Lund) and her long-time second in command, Dolly (Sidney). They shoplift! They throw knives about! They smoke! This is all to the concern, not so much of her parents (who seem largely oblivious to the moral depths into which their daughter is sinking, providing her skirts aren’t too short), as her boyfriend, Mike (Halsey), who is concerned about where the Hellcats are leading Joyce.

Dolly, meanwhile, is none too happy at the increasingly cozy relationship between Connie and Joyce, that threatens to supplant her position as deputy. Matters come to a head after a party at an unoccupied house, where a game of “sardines” has a tragic conclusion. The death is hushed up, with all present vowing to keep it secret – but the cops are soon nosing around, and the pressure starts to cause cracks in the Hellcats – some members in particular…

Probably the most deliciously mad element is the first “initiation” through which Joyce has to go, involving her in the hideous crime of… wearing slacks to school. Clearly, these young women are completely irredeemable and beyond any hope of redemption. Yeah, it all seems remarkably sweet and innocent in comparison to modern life; though on the other hand, this was also while segregation was still part of American culture, and the entirely Caucasian nature of the film and its cast is also notable. But as so often, the bad girls seem an awful lot more fun than the blandly-uninteresting Joyce; give them seven more years (plus some plastic surgery), and they could end up starring in Faster, Pussycat! – there’s much the same enthusiastic spitting of over-ripe dialogue here.

It isn’t just their attitude: it’s notable that, unlike some entries in the “teenage girl gang” genre, the Hellcats are not an off-shoot of a male gang, or indeed, beholden to men in any way – the only male character of note is Mike, and he is basically as useful as a chocolate teapot. Even at the end, when Joyce is lured into a late-night meeting at the derelict cinema which is the gang’s HQ, he serves no significant purpose. That’s remarkably advanced for its time, and is the kind of forward thinking which keeps this watchable when, let’s be honest, many of the topical elements are more likely to trigger derisive snorts in the contemporary viewer. On the other hand, the amusement added certainly can’t be said to detract from the overall entertainment value.  While I’m not exactly going to claim this is some kind of hidden gem, it was certainly more watchable than I expected, given both the passage of time and its obvious throwaway nature, even in its day.

Dir: Edward Bernds
Star: Yvonne Lime, Brett Halsey, Susanne Sidney, Jana Lund

Let There Be Zombies

  By

★★
“Fight off the Living Dead”

Let-There-Be-ZombiesIt’s curious to look back at the history of zombie movies, which as we know them, began with a low-budget horror film called Night of the Living Dead, in 1968. Almost fifty years later, zombies have gone utterly mainstream, giving us films such as World War Z and the most popular show on basic cable, The Walking Dead. But it has also re-spawned its own slew of low-budget genre entries, many of which prove the truth of the statement, “Just because you can make a zombie movie. doesn’t mean you should make a zombie movie.” Even as a horror fan, I will happily admit many of these should have been strangled at birth, rehashing over-familiar story-lines with poverty-row production values and inexperienced talent on both sides of the camera.

This is not quite in the same category of being irredeemable. Certainly, there’s nothing much new in the story of a handful of survivors struggling to cope in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, and the effects are workmanlike at best. However, it managed to sustain my interest somewhat better than many of its undead siblings. The heroine is Drew (Daly), a rookie teacher painfully unable to handle disruptive pupils her class – as she’s told, “Control the situation, don’t let the situation control you.” Before she can do that though, the apocalypse strikes and in trying to flee, her car runs out of gas in the middle of the countryside. She meets another lost soul, computer programmer Jeff (Lowe) and they try to find safety, eventually ending up on the farm run by Red (Monsante) – but it’s only a brief respite before the hordes track them down there, and Drew is going to need to transform from her milquetoast personality, if she’s to have any hope of surviving.

It’s this character arc which qualifies it for inclusion here, though it’s less of an arc than the flicking-on of a psychological switch. One second, she’s afraid of her own shadow; the next, having found a gun, she’s blasting away at the undead like they were a fairground attraction. This could be sloppy writing, or it could be a deliberate statement on the immediate empowerment obtained by possession of a firearm. Certainly, she’s a good deal more interesting once she’s in bad-ass mode, and by the time of the film’s coda, she has more or less turned into Alice from Resident Evil – albeit, without any of the cool moves. The script, however, is extremely hit-or-miss: if there were a couple of moments, where I’ll confess I did laugh, there are just as many where poor delivery killed any potential. Patterson and the rest of his cast and crew clearly have a deep love for the genre. That can only take a film so far, and unless you have a similar affection, there’s only so much entertainment to be found in watching the walking dead get prodded with bits of wood.

Dir: Andrew Patterson
Star: Sydney Daly, Manuel Monsante, Doug Lowe, Enrique Arellano