 | Genre: Horror |
This premise does help lend credence to the found footage including less obvious to film plot points. As journalists, they are filming the call and when things take the weird turn they immediately decide documenting it is important. It plays out in real time, with the presenter repeatedly expressing a need to record everything and to show people what they are being put through.
It's also a clever film in terms of the zombie subgenre. The z-word is never used, and the people attacking them are not shown to be dead, brain hungry or only killable by brain trauma. Instead, they seem ill and feverish with rage. As one infected person bites at the firefighter, I was reminded of news stories on bath salts as drugs, where confused angry users attacked, bit and killed people; the headlines I thought of were even things like "Bath Salts Zombies" and the behaviour seemed similar. Later, the only medical person around is a vet, and he likens the infection to a scarily rapid onset of rabies.
The quarantine is revealed to be a declared BNC situation; a Biological, Nuclear or Chemical threat. It could have been left vague but our intrepid journalists do undercover some answers that suggest a bigger story behind this one. The engineers super-rabies does a fantastic job of using all the metaphor of the zombie subgenre that really scares us, while keeping it realistic enough to keep a modern sceptical viewer suspending disbelief. It also puts us firmly in the fast zombies distinction, a higher paced attack rather than gradual breach.
The main problem with this otherwise brilliant film is it's poster. The same image is every DVD cover, every download or viewing link, the Netflix image and the only image I could really use for this review. The second you start watching and recognise the character pictured or that the majority of the film does not look like that - not night vision, not in small spaces, not full attack on the main character - and you realise that you know a big fat spoiler no matter how you interpret the image. The trailer is worse, showing the ending scene and utterly ruining the ending. In this way, the first viewing is more like a second. Any tension is replaced by nervous intrigue. "What will happen?" is replaced by "How do we get from here to that ending?".
Still, the "everyone dies" is a staple of found footage. It's found by somebody else and reveals the fate of the people shown. It's just a shame for such a petty thing to be such a huge spoiler.
Being a good horror film there are some well-executed jump scares and a steady rise in the severity and apprehension. Of course, also being a zombie film there is some gore. It's not revelled in or used to cause disgust as a ersatz fear, but it is enough to be unpleasant. One absolutely fantastic jumpscare is violent and intense, but breaks a moment of high tension enough to be both awful and funny.
One factor is good vs bad horror is the continuation of fear after the credits roll. The realism included is a huge factor that kept me up the night after watching. Saying "rabies" "BNC" and "CDC" (the Center for Disease Control) led me on a regrettable internet search and gave me a good case of the Adult Fears. Remakes are often bad, but this is definitely worth it.
It's also a clever film in terms of the zombie subgenre. The z-word is never used, and the people attacking them are not shown to be dead, brain hungry or only killable by brain trauma. Instead, they seem ill and feverish with rage. As one infected person bites at the firefighter, I was reminded of news stories on bath salts as drugs, where confused angry users attacked, bit and killed people; the headlines I thought of were even things like "Bath Salts Zombies" and the behaviour seemed similar. Later, the only medical person around is a vet, and he likens the infection to a scarily rapid onset of rabies.
The quarantine is revealed to be a declared BNC situation; a Biological, Nuclear or Chemical threat. It could have been left vague but our intrepid journalists do undercover some answers that suggest a bigger story behind this one. The engineers super-rabies does a fantastic job of using all the metaphor of the zombie subgenre that really scares us, while keeping it realistic enough to keep a modern sceptical viewer suspending disbelief. It also puts us firmly in the fast zombies distinction, a higher paced attack rather than gradual breach.
The main problem with this otherwise brilliant film is it's poster. The same image is every DVD cover, every download or viewing link, the Netflix image and the only image I could really use for this review. The second you start watching and recognise the character pictured or that the majority of the film does not look like that - not night vision, not in small spaces, not full attack on the main character - and you realise that you know a big fat spoiler no matter how you interpret the image. The trailer is worse, showing the ending scene and utterly ruining the ending. In this way, the first viewing is more like a second. Any tension is replaced by nervous intrigue. "What will happen?" is replaced by "How do we get from here to that ending?".
Still, the "everyone dies" is a staple of found footage. It's found by somebody else and reveals the fate of the people shown. It's just a shame for such a petty thing to be such a huge spoiler.
Being a good horror film there are some well-executed jump scares and a steady rise in the severity and apprehension. Of course, also being a zombie film there is some gore. It's not revelled in or used to cause disgust as a ersatz fear, but it is enough to be unpleasant. One absolutely fantastic jumpscare is violent and intense, but breaks a moment of high tension enough to be both awful and funny.
One factor is good vs bad horror is the continuation of fear after the credits roll. The realism included is a huge factor that kept me up the night after watching. Saying "rabies" "BNC" and "CDC" (the Center for Disease Control) led me on a regrettable internet search and gave me a good case of the Adult Fears. Remakes are often bad, but this is definitely worth it.
