The second film I caught on day 3 of Toronto After Dark 2011 was also the second zombie film for zombie appreciation night. It was also one that I was really looking forward to.
Quite a while ago, I had seen a trailer for this flick. Set in Germany and involving Nazi zombies, it looked great. The trailer was full of snow, body parts, ominous music, and what looked like a great idea. All kinds of funding problems arose and the film was put on hold, numerous times I believe. Eventually it all came together and here we have it. The problem is, it’s just not the same film anymore.
Even though it looked great, and managed to be action packed almost from the first minute, it was so far off from what I was expecting that I was pretty disappointed.
It was just another of those weird surprises of the festival this year. Exit Humanity contained all the elements of being a great movie but lost it with it’s slow pace. War of the Dead had the opposite problem for me. It went so fast and needed to take a minute to breathe, relate some story to me, and then head back into the action. Again, great to look at with some very cool zombies and awesome shots, but totally lacking the great feel of that original trailer I had seen. Not to mention that the story is something you could knock out in a few sentences.
Army guys storm a bunker, find zombies, and fight a lot.
American and Finnish soldiers are waiting to move forward on a bunker where the Russians have been. Suddenly they’re attacked by zombies, leftovers from an experiment a few years earlier, and are forced to move ahead. From that point it’s the soldiers fighting zombies without much else happening. There’s a bit of a side story in there of a young Russian searching for his missing girlfriend but it’s wrapped up pretty quickly. There’s just not enough going on to make the movie feel like anything more than a video game. The high point there is just how much insane action there is.
There's nothing worse than a pissed off, jacked up, army zombie.
The zombies seem more interested in hand to hand combat with people instead of eating them like we’re all used to seeing. That’s fine as it’s all done quite well. They really don’t let up when they start. Bullets are flying, explosions here and there, and a lot of crazy zombie boxing matches take place. You can tell they’ve been built as weapons for the army. Unstoppable and with a lust for brutal violence, these zombies are slowly creeping their way into your home. They’re kicking the front door in before backflipping onto your couch and kicking you in the face. I would assume they’ll eat you when they’re done though.
Too bad there wasn’t really anything left from that original trailer I had watched. With investor problems and the film being put on hold time and time again, you can see how it’s suffered. It had promise but needs more polish. It’s good to see so much action on display but it was the promise of this crazy story that I was most interested in, and it’s the lack of that story that leaves me the most disappointed.
In the shadows – Will
