Tag Archive for 'Horror'

I went into this movie with zero preconceptions, all I knew about this movie was that it was a remake of a George A. Romero ‘not quite a zombie’ movie.

What I liked:

There was lots of great things about this movie. The cast was great, I recognized all of the main trio and most importantly they were all decent actors. The lead male Timothy Olyphant I recognized instantly from Deadwood and Hitman, and any remote horror movie fan should recognize Radha Mitchell from Silent Hill and Pitch Black.

The premise was different for a zombie movie, however while it was likely very original on the initial release it is now occasionally used. An unmarked plane crashed far upstream of the towns water supply and it was carrying a toxin (technically a toxicant as it was man made and introduced) designed to destabilise the population. What’s not explained is that the condition the toxin creates is allegedly itself infections, however this seems to get contradicted in the movie itself.

What I disliked:

The pacing in the beginning was excellent, however it began to degenerate towards the end, with the movie itself ending about 30 minutes beyond the optimal ending, for those who don’t want to know why, skip the next paragraph!

Spoilers Follow (I’ll try to keep it light): The town breaks out in full on Crazy fever and the military intervenes, sorting the healthies from the crazies and ships the healthies away, however anyone running a fever is locked up in a crazy camp. David (Timothy) the town sheriff is shipped of as healthy while his pregnant wife is locked up to be tested and his deputy is put in a holding cell. A rescue attempt saves David’s wife and they make it out of town, running into a few problems along the way, however this is where the pacing slows down. The perfect ending for this movie would have been their escape past the military lines, however it took about 30 minutes longer than this of very slow semi-action. Spoilers End.

Beyond the pacing, nothing was really bad, which is surprising. However, I must stress it, the pacing was really bad. The plot was believable, however this believability likely contributed a lot to the dead pace. They could easily have cut out a secondary character and skipped about 15 minutes, which would have helped greatly. For those who see this movie, you’ll instantly know who I mean and how easily she could have been removed (for a great increase in shock-factor).

Overall: 7/10

If a few pacing issues had been resolved, it could have been excellent, definitely a 9/10. However this would have made it a 60 minute movie, and no one would pay the exorbitant theatre price for a little over an hour of film. In the film it appears like a section is stripped from the original script, right where David turns the towns water supply off, which could have provided a good extra 20 minutes (that a certain secondary character hogged) of conflict between the Sheriff and the towns mayor and populace. In fact, it would likely have been an ideal way to display how widespread the infection has gotten in the populace, however this chance wasn’t taken.

The 60 minutes of this movie that had perfect pace, great cast and original story were gold. However, the extra 40 minutes were slow and relatively useless, especially in the present day where the ending likely didn’t have the same dramatic effect the original likely had on its release in ’73. For horror fans, it’s certainly worth a watch, and I’ll have no hesitation to rewatch it, however for the majority of people it’s likely a watch once film, so definitely not a buy.

Judgement: Rent it.