‘The Clearing’, ‘Live Escape’ and ‘Within the Woods of Undead County’
aka “A live Escape from The Clearing Within the Woods of Undead County.”
By CptBlackVest
So me and my friend Giallo Julian have a bad zombie movie habit. I mean that in both senses of the term: we got it bad for the genre, but also we tend to watch a lot of absolute trash zombie films. Zombie films are infamous, sometimes for good reason, for being bad. I recall someone telling me a long time ago that if you're a low-budget horror director, you do a slasher film if you only have a few actors and extras, and a zombie film if you have a bunch. And while I think that's not true... sometimes it's hard to argue.
So Giallo Julian texts me for another night where he found three of them: The Clearing, Live Escape, and Within the Woods of Undead County. So after bracing myself with the magic of alcohol, we dove in. And for the first time in a while, I was pleasantly surprised... by The Clearing. Spoilers.
I suppose the unifying 'theme' of this trio of films is 'limited locations with assholes,' which is supposedly the 'default' for zombie films, though I disagree somewhat. I've seen at least as many films where they roam a reasonably big area, or even if it's one location, it's a big and interesting one. Each film has a limited cast and a limited location the cast is in, and you could argue they're trapped in each case.
As usual, spoilers ahead, though since I like one and a half of these films, I'll try to keep them light enough that you can still watch the film. The executive summary of each film right now though, so you know going in?
The Clearing: While not doing anything innovative beyond the location (if only barely), does everything well. Not reinventing the wheel but solid. Worth a watch if you're a fan of the genre at all.
Live Escape: "Hey guys let's try and do REC or Quarantine, but with no budget and much worse." The worst of the three by far due to being utterly boring and uninteresting. It's not even bad in an inventive or memorable way, it's just dull.
Within the Woods of Undead County: A lot of wasted potential. There's glimmers of a good movie or an interesting examination of the genre that are drowned with uninteresting characters and poor decisions and 'meh' writing. D+, see me after class.
The Clearing
Directed and written by David Matalon, this movie stars Tom (Liam McIntyre) and Mira (Aundrea Smith). Tom is a Dad who's taken his daughter Mira out camping. Waking up in his pull-along big camping trailer, he's confused as to why Mira's missing. Stepping out to call out for his daughter, he discovers the campground has been overrun with seemingly parasite-ridden running zombies. Fighting them off, he spots Mira alive and tells her to run, and they're split up, with Tom trapped in his trailer.
FLASHBACK: Tom, Mira, and the Mom Naomi (Sydelle Noel) are at home. Mira's in the Girl Scouts while Tom is a semi-believable version of that old school extremely masculine jerk Dad ('Back in my day in the Scouts, we didn't pick flowers!'). This provokes an argument between him and Mira, and Naomi gets angry at him for that, because Tom's an ass, but not an asshole. Like, he's a believable old-school hardass Dad, which I mention because I know a lot of other movies would screw it up one way or another by making him too 'light' or just making him an unredeemable ass (while still trying to pretend he's the hero).
(I should also mention, just because it's nice to see for me, but Tom and Naomi are an interracial couple in film where it's not like a serious plot point or the point of the film. Tom's white, Naomi's black, Mira's mixed-race, and that's just there and okay. It's kind of refreshing to see, but that might just be me.)
Naomi insists Tom make it right, and eventually they settle in on taking Mira camping. This goes poorly at first, and as we know, it'll go really poorly. But Mira's unhappy and barely interested, while Tom's a bit of an idiot who doesn't seem to realize at first that he's alienating his kid. He tells her to put her phone away in the trailer, then takes her on a hike when she's not even interested in camping. But they start to bond again and try to mend fences by *gasp* talking, and while it's not an instant fix, it's a start! She even confides in him about a crush on one of the boys she talked to at the campground-- oh right this isn't a feel good family film, back to Tom trapped on the roof of his trailer!
I won't go much further into it, but they make good use of the fact that Tom's trapped in quite possibly the worst 'building' you could be trapped in that isn't a tent. As someone who's lived in an RV and trailer for a time, watching as the trailer fails him throughout the film was very fun. Tom spends the majority of the film in or on his trailer, having to deal with running zombies and trying to come up with solutions to either problems as they develop, or a way to kill or distract the undead enough to pull off his plans and ideas.
Tom is also the UNLUCKIEST zombie apocalypse protagonist I've ever seen where it doesn't just directly kill or maim the person. No really. That 'Mira and Tom bonding while camping' scene sets up like a half dozen 'Chekov's Gun' moments which come back to bite Tom. As an example? He tries to call Mira's phone after things settle slightly... only for a cabinet to start ringing, because Tom ordered her to put her phone up. He goes out during the rain to close up his truck window the night before... but doesn't shut the door properly, leaving the dome light on and thus draining the battery.
Even ignoring those? So much bad stuff happens to Tom that it starts to become almost funny. Tom almost falls off the roof, a tree crashes through the window during a storm, a zombie that miraculously retained his fighting skills in life climbs up on the roof with Tom and a brawl ensues. And again, he's trapped in a largish RV trailer. If you've never been, those things generally aren't built for sturdiness, which is proven repeatedly by things breaking.
There's... really only a few odd points. Not bad, just odd. Tom spends a decent chunk of the movie sick with... something. They don't explain what it is, as it isn't a zombie infection. My guess is either a cold or a wound infection, but I suppose the only reason for it is to explain perhaps why Tom (a surprisingly good brawler) doesn't slowly pick off the undead around his trailer in some form or fashion, or perhaps just run for it.
Similarly, Tom is taunted by the fact that he left seemingly most of his supplies in a 'bear bag' (read: hanging your stuff up in a bag from a tree, so if a bear or something comes by they can't get it and also won't tear apart your tent or trailer trying to get it). We know later there's some food in it, but despite later getting the opportunity, Tom doesn't bother retrieving the bag. And until we knew there was food in it, Julian and I assumed there was either medical supplies (for his numerous scratches and gouges that he bandaged up with sheets that potentially caused his coughing fits and weakness) or cigarettes (as they establish earlier in the film Tom's getting cajoled by his wife and daughter to give up smoking).
But the biggest one (again, in an 'odd' way) is the Ranger (Steven Swadling). Throughout the movie, Tom's attempting to contact people by radio, hearing someone vaguely through the static and unable to talk with them. Towards the final thirty minutes of the film, the Ranger arrives, crashing his car and getting rescued by Tom. But the Ranger is very suspicious and (spoilers) eventually turns out to be a threat, albeit one that might've been 'provoked' by Tom. But this inexplicable British 'Ranger' stole the clothes and wallet from the actual Ranger at the very least, and does try to kill Tom, getting killed in return.
Except... here's the thing. The Ranger adds nothing to the film beyond adding like ten to fifteen minutes to the runtime. Like we had to stop and think because he could've been cut easily. The real ranger might've been the man on the radio. The imposter arrives, Tom rescues him without injury or loss. They talk and Tom really learns nothing save maybe he saw Mira. Tom gets suspicious of him because the Ranger seems shady. Tom finds out the Ranger's not a Ranger. They fight, Tom takes 'non-injuries' (read: gets knocked out which is usually a nothing for films). Tom overpowers the Ranger on the roof and feeds him to the zombies. And the next scene, Tom sees Mira doing smoke-signals (a skill he taught her), a similar 'she could be alive and in that direction' that the Ranger gave.
The Ranger doesn't really injure or cause loss to Tom. His trickery or information doesn't advise or beguile Tom. Tom technically gets a pair of handcuffs and maybe an empty revolver from the encounter, but he doesn't use them for the rest of the film. The Ranger honestly feels like he was added because "Oh right this is zombie media, we have to have Man's Inhumanity to Man! Give us a Human Antagonist!" Like he was added after the film was already shot.
Either way. The Clearing isn't doing anything especially new, beyond the location being an RV trailer in a campground. But the cast is likeable enough, the special effects work and in a few cases are very good (despite in some cases being 'obvious' CGI), and they get a lot of mileage out of Tom having to improvise stuff because he's in a trailer instead of a house. It's a nice, short, self-contained story and overall a fun watch. It does all the familiar stuff right, not amazingly, but not poorly. Just don't go in expecting anything new or clever.
(Hey Blood Babes! Giallo here. Quick note that BlackVest left out — This film was produced by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment… Yes, THAT Chicken Soup for the Soul. Weird, right? That was the first thing we noticed when popping on the film, and I’m still not sure why they decided to make a zombie flick. I mean… might as well, right? Everyone else is doing it. Anyway, back to BlackVest!)
Live Escape
Directed and 'written' by Joe Lujan, this movie stars Jensen Harrison (Bryant Smith) and Pete Jimenez (Joe Lujan), two cops (with Harrison being an experienced one while Jimenez is a rookie). They go about some police business and banter, before getting called in about a dead body at a homeless shelter... twenty minutes into the film. I mention this because Julian mentioned a rule he follows where a movie has fifteen minutes to hook him. The Clearing had us hooked three minutes in, while this movie... oi.
Both of our protagonists are... just uninteresting. I'm going to avoid the... police debate, let's call it, as I suppose these two are 'good cops,' though the film itself references it with them pulling over a guy who takes video of the cops just so they don't shoot him for being non-white. But even ignoring my disinterest in cop characters, Harrison and Jimenez are dull. Their characterization is almost non-existent as well. Harrison trains rookies, is a former Marine I believe, and busies himself even well into the situation by asking bizarre 'would you rather' questions ("Yo new guy, would you rather be locked in jail and get sexually assaulted once a month, or would you rather star in a viral TikTok where someone pranks you with shit and sex toys?").
Jimenez... I got nothing, which is surprising since Jimenez is played by the film's director and writer.
But I digress. I'm going to spoil this entire film, simply because there's not much going on. It's shot entirely on police body cam, with a dash of the police car dash-cam and internal security cameras in the 'Homeless Shelter.' So hope you enjoy shaky-cam and bad angles! The two cops get called in and enter the Homeless Shelter, and uh… If they'd named it 'Homeless Squatter Camp,' it would've worked better, but it'd still be bizarre.
The principle location for the film is a strange crumbling ruin in what looks like a convention center. Like, there's a lot of inexplicable crumbling masonry, interior stone windows, strange ramps and bridges. It looks like someone took an interior level from the game Dead By Daylight and filmed a movie in it, but worse. Up until the cops mention that the front doors were locked behind them (as while we weren't paying too much attention, I swear we didn't see them try), I thought the cops just had Aphantasia (the inability to picture things in their heads, which does interfere with navigation) or something because they were going in circles despite getting near landmarks I recalled seeing on their way in. In addition, the homeless shelter inexplicably has a bunch of prints of famous artwork on the crumbling walls, and later on they wander into the Off-Brand version of a mad scientist lab before wandering from there into something that looks like a haunted hotel.
This is the same building mind you, explicitly so.
The cops bumble around, getting spooked by 'dead bodies' and homeless people (read: zombies) acting in bizarre ways. They get attacked a few times. They're unable to call out save when it's dramatically convenient, and their dispatch is unable to help them. And they keep running by barely-secured fire exit doors, which I definitely don't recall them ever trying to get through. Eventually they find proper survivors, which is about when the zombies go from 'Jump Scare opposition in a PG-Rated Horror Game' to 'oh right these are zombies,' and suddenly they spend a good portion of the film pursued by, like, forty zombies. I'm describing it in a very boring way, and somehow it's even more boring than that to watch.
They find the 'Manager's Office,' where they finally get a map... ugh. This map, they show it in poor detail a few times, but to me it looks like a borderline useless map. I can't tell if it's like a big open convention center, or server farm map, or a circuit diagram, but given how labyrinthine this place is supposed to be, said map seems less than useful. While trying to flee, they get split up by zombies, the homeless people they rescued fucking off into the night only to show up later to cause problems. Specifically, the girl, allegedly named 'Kate' (Judy Lay) as I'll be fucked if I can remember them getting named, runs off after her 'friend' (who is clearly or likely a zombie and she's been told this), and 'Liam' (Eric Lum) runs off after her. Later on in the film, we find Liam cradling Kate's dead body, surrounded by dormant zombies, and while trying to convince him to rejoin and leave, Jimenez repeatedly shouts and awakens the zombies. No really, he had plenty of time to change his approach or just leave the unwilling-to-leave Liam, but instead he keeps shouting and slowly awakens the zombies to cause more problems.
The two cops bumble into a knockoff Mad Scientist lab, which inexplicably occasionally looks like an old haunted hotel or apartment building in spots. They find evidence that *gasp* the scientists caused zombies and it leaked. It's at this point that Dispatch gets back to them, saying the CDC is there to set up quarantine, and the cops realize that they're probably screwed if they mention they found the lab.
Before they can mention it though, whoops, their Sarge on the line gets killed on air. They find an unnamed scientist (no idea who to credit there) with very 'interesting' facial hair and regular hair decisions, who claims they were trying to come up with cures. Sure you were, in your 'highly secure' lab under a level from the old X-Box Game Condemned. He tells them the way out, but gets killed by a zombie.
The cops eventually escape, only to find that the city's in chaos (read: CGI fires on some of the distant buildings). The zombies rush out and seemingly kill Jimenez. Woo.
(This movie got a sequel, incidentally, where Harrison and Jimenez continue their BS. We watched the Tubi trailer for it... Y'know how trailers are supposed to get you hooked into the film? The trailer focuses on the ACAB car guy, I think, who filmed them earlier in the film. Not doing anything exciting, mind, he's just talking on the phone while driving for, like, two or three minutes. As you might guess, I'm not watching the sequel.)
This movie was very tedious. We tried to give it a chance, but it failed every test. Some of the gore was okay, and Jimenez has a decent idea at one point where he plays music on his phone and then tosses it for a distraction... which worked for like a scene before they're swamped in the zombies again. The film was as confusing and disjointed as the building they were in, the plot and effects and action did nothing amazing or even adequate, the dialogue sucked, and the zombies only seemed to be a threat if you weren't named 'Harrison' or 'Jimenez.' No really, at one point they just kind of jog through the hordes, and the only consequence is Jimenez catches himself on the corner of a wall and cuts himself.
Now I get it from a movie standpoint. When you only have two characters for, like, half the film, having them get killed or seriously injured does wreck a lot of your options. The Clearing had a similar issue, but balanced it out by having Tom's incredibly bad luck and the flashbacks with other characters. I felt tension every time Tom nearly got mangled, whereas here the cops are untouchable for 99% of the film's run. And when they did get hurt or hampered, I didn't even enjoy it, I just didn't care.
There's no action really either, Jimenez loses his gun early (possibly because they could only afford one airsoft gun). There's some zombie fighting, with a few shot, one tased, and a few get their necks broken by Harrison and Jimenez. And the only scares are either poor jump-scares or 'oh look there's a zombie in the shadows in the distance,' which can be effective, but they use it a lot. I didn't tense up in this film at all from the 'scares,' while the fights had all the action and excitement of writing this review.
And the location was, as mentioned repeatedly, confusing. It was a mess and, thanks to having a good memory, I often kept seeing the same spots, leading me to believe these guys were just running in circles, or it was almost entirely shot in someone's school gym gussied up for the role. It made no sense for realism or, honestly, horror. Like... I recall in some interview about the original Resident Evil game where they deliberately designed each room of the mansion to look like it came from a different home or style, as a deliberate method of raising unease and making the place seem otherworldly. You couldn't quite tell where you were or where you were going, because it'd go from “fancy room” to “crumbling shack” through just a single door.
This is not the case in this movie: it feels like a confusing mess of a location that makes no sense in or out of the film.
And no place fits this better than their 'lab.' They take an elevator down (with their flashlights temporarily failing because, presumably, their shooting location didn't have an old-fashioned elevator to use) and enter what looks like a cramped apartment room, hide from zombies in it, then move past them into a cramped pseudo-lab with an isolation room. From there they move into what looks like the hall to an apartment or hotel, then to the back employee utility halls you might see in a hotel or stadium or convention center. Finally, they go through a 'security door' that looks like it's made out of gym locker doors and end up back in the madness homeless shelter. No, I didn't skip them taking stairs or an elevator back up.
If you didn't get it from this short review, I hated this movie. There's movies I hate more, but at least they're memorable in their badness. This was just... a slog, and an uninteresting one at that. I'm not even curious to see if the sequel improved things at all.
(Giallo, again! Just wanted to say that BlackVest’s just kidding. We’ll be MORE than HAPPY to check out the sequel for y’all. Promise!)
Within the Woods of Undead County
Directed by Nicholas Paul Pontoski, and written by both Pontoski and Justin Stephens (and allegedly adapted from an earlier Stephens story), this movie opens... interestingly.
I'm going to get this out here right now. We watched this immediately after Live Escape, and weren't expecting much. It's better than the previous, but I was spending a lot of time making jokes related to the video game Project Zomboid, because the cast very much plays like most people's first run in that game. So apologies, but I'm going to pepper some jokes about that for this.
The film opens with a news broadcast about how a pharmaceutical company is making a wonder drug that's supposed to tackle a lot of stuff, including a new disease that affects deer, but moved to people. There's some flak on it from another pharmacy company about safety, but the CEO of the new wonder drug says it's completely safe! So we cut to someone running through the woods, clearly unconcerned about burning through their stamina bar. This someone is Jocelyn (Gabriella Harry), who is running with a crowbar in hand and clearly afraid of something. A zombie wanders into her path, and she learns the classic Zomboid lesson (and Zombieland lesson) about running out of stamina. In the ensuing 'fight,' she's too weak/tired to fend the zombie fully off, and the zombie manages to twist the crowbar and stabs her in the shoulder deeply.
Jocelyn manages to fight off and kill the zombie, but whoops, that's a serious wound and is treated as such. Jocelyn rapidly loses control of that arm, and the pain and rapid blood loss makes her drop. She keeps crawling as we're treated to the sight of a few dozen zombies traipsing through the woods after her. She finally runs out of steam, a zombie approaching her. She looks up at the sky, the color fading, and it's not looking good for our protag. "Oh you're probably wondering how I got here," she doesn't say, but she might as well have, as we flash back three days.
I should also note, this film uses time cards and occasionally distance/location cards, and the very first time card really fucks things up, to the point we were confused until the end of the film. Specifically, it goes '72 HOURS BEFORE INITIAL INCIDENT,' so we were lead to believe that we'd have three days before zombies. Instead, it should've just been '72 HOURS AGO,' because the next time we get a time card it says '7 HOURS AFTER INITIAL INCIDENT,' leading us to believe she spent THREE DAYS and CHANGE hiding in an alley. But I digress.
Jocelyn wakes up and puts on the clothes we see her seemingly die in. Her radio is blasting 'OH SHIT' Emergency Alert System noises like something's gone wrong, and after getting dressed she sees the TV is doing similar Emergency Broadcast Alert shenanigans. We briefly meet Jocelyn's sister Carol (Erin Weinberger), who is trying to tell Jocelyn that someone attacked her and things are bad, but Jocelyn's not really understanding it. This rapidly changes, as the zombies (which we now see are Runners, despite earlier seemingly being slow Shamblers) break into Jocelyn and Carol's apartment. They attempt to run, but Carol hesitates long enough that the zombies get her. Jocelyn runs out into Philadelphia and sees a lot of people getting wrecked by running zombies.
(This is also where I finally noticed something that's bugged me about these sorts of scenes, where it's the opening chaos to some sort of apocalyptic situation. Namely, when zombies/terrorists/a plague hit major cities, do people just go to the upper floors of office buildings and set fires? Because a lot of these movies do 'tall building turning into a matchstick' as shorthand for a serious disaster, and I just realized how odd it is that that's so common.)
Jocelyn is trying to flee through alleys when she spots way too many in the streets, and can't retreat because the zombies are moving into the alley. She has a smart-ish idea to quickly move a rolling dumpster in front of a dead-end alley branch to block it off and hide. Cue the time card that confused us to her sitting there for days. We get the title card...
...and then cut to a thuggish-looking guy, Matt (Cory Handelong) pointing a gun at Jocelyn's head. He's demanding to know if Jocelyn's infected in a very stand-offish way, but before things can go wrong, a zombie tackles Matt. Jocelyn gets the gun and rapidly finds out why you don't fire off a gun in Louisville in Zomboid, as while she saves Matt and alerts Matt's more reasonable friends, they attract the horde. But we briefly meet Ashm (Mike Motyl) and Kelly (Angela McCormick). Yes, that's his name, Ashm isn't a typo and nor is his actor's last name. But Ashm seems like a nice enough guy, while Kelly is that asshole Matt's girlfriend and is about as nice as you figure. Before the zombies arrive, they mention their plan to flee the city into the woods, but the zombies arrive and Matt fires the gun empty before they flee.
Another time card, with a distance card. Thirty-six hours after the initial outbreak, quite a time jump, especially since they walked out of Philly for FIFTY-ONE MILES. Quite a pace, especially since some of that would be panicked running (and then catching their breath) and likely a lot of stealth, which is usually done slow. But I digress again.
Our gang of four are in the woods, and seemingly either did some looting or supply distribution off-camera, as Jocelyn now has an emergency radio clipped to her belt. The group argues and we rapidly see that either they started as not friends, or the trio Jocelyn joined rapidly hit that point in *checks notes* a day and a half. They argue and, well, the rest of the movie hinges around the fact that they listened to Matt and ran off into the wooded mountains with no plan or supplies. I suppose I'll spoil this one as well.
They argue about whether or not to stick to the mountain, or to try and get to a nearby small town for supplies. After finding a hunting tree stand where someone died horribly (and Jocelyn gets a baseball bat), Ashm eventually goes off to check that town on his own, with Jocelyn following. Matt and Kelly spend most of their combined screentime arguing, though they justify it by Matt later admitting he has anger problems, and was putting up with his own issues with Kelly's 'bitchiness' because she put up with his anger. Another wonderful match in toxic codependency!
Meanwhile, Ashm is heading down a trail for a really long time before stopping because he spots four zombies eating a recent kill. Jocelyn is slowly pursuing him. It looks like Ashm might be able to backtrack safely... but eventually Matt gets bored, or concerned, or something, and shouts for where Ashm and Jocelyn got off to, alerting the zombies. Matt runs off to join the fight because he's not a complete jackass... but leaves Kelly alone and unarmed. In the ensuing fight, the four zombies there are killed, but a zombie ambushes and bites the crap out of Kelly, and Ashm trips and loses the map without realizing it for a while. They decide to flee the area, and we get another comedic time and distance card.
Namely, they run for like seven or eight hours, covering 28 miles, which is kind of impressive. More impressive, in a stupidity sense, was that only after eight hours do they realize 'oh shit, right, Kelly's bleeding like a stuck pig.' They set up camp and do some basic triage, but as Ashm and Jocelyn go off to get firewood, Ashm discusses how he's pretty sure Kelly's dying from having lost too much blood, and they discuss whether or not to leave her (and likely Matt) behind. Matt, meanwhile, is stubbornly setting up camp while sort of reassuring the dying Kelly, while ignoring for a time how Kelly just wants Matt to sit with her. They talk a bit, and Kelly wants Matt to kill her before she reanimates, because she's guessing that's what's coming for her. She's right, and Matt kills her with a sledgehammer, though this briefly causes issues with Ashm and Jocelyn when they return because they didn't think she might turn into a zombie, and figured Matt killed her while still alive.
They have a brief moment of characterization while camping. The radio's talking the usual zombie apocalypse stuff ('TUNE IN FOR MORE INFORMATION, STAY AT HOME, TRUST THE GOVERNMENT'), but does confirm that whoops, the miracle drug bonded with the deer virus and something something zombies. I think Mira Grant's Feed novel series did it better, but I digress.
They talk about who they lost after getting frustrated and turning off the radio. Ashm's a college student and heard from his parents how they made it to a bunker in upstate New York, and hopes they're safe. Matt mentions he lost his girlfriend, and I think Jocelyn at least wasn't aware he and Kelly were dating. After some prodding, she tells them about how she got kicked out from her parents for some nebulous reason and was staying with Carol, and she blames herself for Carol's death. She has a nightmare about a zombie Carol attacking her... and wakes up to find Ashm looking around, and Matt gone with Kelly's body.
Matt's gone to... I guess leave Kelly's body somewhere more dignified, but leaving her in the middle of the woods is hardly better than leaving her where she'd been before. Meanwhile, Ashm and Jocelyn just leave, realizing they might never find Matt. Ashm and Jocelyn stumble across an area littered with wrecked and rusted-out cars and other garbage, which struck me as some stereotypical, hillbilly, rural woods shack area. And while they search for supplies or water, surprise, there's some hillbilly-looking guy (TJ Chinaski) who looks like a meth addict and sounds like Snake Jailbird from The Simpsons.
The Hillbilly (he's credited as such) grabs Jocelyn and holds Ashm at gunpoint. He's decided that the world's ended, the rules are off... you know this story. He's after Jocelyn and tells Ashm to fuck off, while Ashm's trying to negotiate with the gun-wielding Hillbilly. Matt stumbles across the area and once again has a brief moment of 'having a heart,' and approaches from behind in stealth to try and rescue the duo. Unfortunately, this goes very wrong, as right about when Matt's going to Sledgehammer the Hillbilly a question, the Hillbilly shoots Ashm in the face. Matt bashes the Hillbilly in the head, and not only is he still alive, but like... look. I get it, this movie doesn't have an amazing budget, like Ashm getting domed was obvious CGI. But the Hillbilly looks more like Matt punched him in the eye, not a heavy sledge hit.
Anyway, between the gunshot and the Hillbilly basically shouting they're all dead, the zombies approach. And I guess the Hillbilly was aware there were enough zombies for the opening of Day of the Dead in the immediate area, since he's seemingly shouting to draw the zombies in more. Matt hits the asshole in the leg with the hammer to guarantee he can't flee, then tries to get Jocelyn to come with him. Jocelyn doesn't initially want to leave Ashm, and in frustration, Matt basically says 'fuck this' and runs off. Jocelyn does rapidly join him with Ashm's crowbar (uh oh) as the zombies arrive and tear apart the Hillbilly.
And we see how we got here. Jocelyn's running, Matt beefs into a bunch of zombies and finds out why Zomboid players don't use the sledge as a weapon (too slow and stamina-draining). As he dies screaming, we literally transition into the intro after the pharmacy interview, as in the full intro scene instead of speeding it up since we've seen it. It's not like they added more scenes beyond Matt's death.
Anyway, Jocelyn collapses and stares at the sky... then — gasp — saviors! A truck rolls up and... wait, no, those are thugs who may or may not be white-power guys, hard to tell. They kill the zombie that's about to get her, assume she's bitten because Jocelyn's too injured to really say much in her defense, then rapidly show they're awful by going 'Ha ha too bad I wanted a piece of that, welp time to leave you for the zombies, thanks for the crowbar though!' Jocelyn can only watch as they leave, laughing bitterly as the zombies get to her in numbers and start killing her.
I was joking towards the end about 'I can't wait for the next time card,' and HAH — another time card! Another two days, so five days in total since the outbreak. And it focuses on our cast... oh wait. We see Matt's corpse that's rather torn up, Kelly's corpse which succumbed to rot instead, Ashm's corpse... I should note the zombies I guess don't eat everything, or I guess only eat them while they're fresh, because the legs were intact every time. Then we cut to Jocelyn... who's a zombie now, despite being in a similar position to Matt, so you'd think she'd also be a picked-clean corpse. Either way, she's shambling around, fin, the end. Oh, and I think the radio's doing one last broadcast going 'THERE IS NO HOPE,' basically.
This film wasn't great... but I could see glimmers of something there. I don't know if it was intentional. I'm honestly either reading too much into it or perhaps projecting the dreaded 'Well this is how I'd do it' into it that writer-types occasionally do with fiction. But one of the things you can read from the film are these are four average people who are unprepared for the woods. This is Matt's idea, but it's suggested that Matt's suffering from a case of 'I went camping once when I was twelve, so clearly I'm ready to live off the land in the woods.' They complain about the travel, and their supplies are clearly minimal: outside of the radio and map, which could've been in Ashm's bag, you see everything they have. Hell, the reason they hit the Hillbilly's 'Property' is to look for supplies.
You could make a deconstruction film about how attempting to bumble off into the woods without prep in a dangerous situation is just switching to a slower death. They have no tents or shelter, we don't see them eat really, and Ashm, shortly before the Hillbilly's arrival, is drinking unfiltered creek water. But instead, the threats to them are entirely standard to the genre: most of the cast is killed by zombies, with one and a half kills from 'Man's Inhumanity To Man.'
And while that might not be everyone's cup of tea, it's been shown the concept works. In the zombie genre, there's the very good The Night Eats The World, which is less about the zombies and more about the crushing ennui the protagonist feels about being the only person around and being trapped in a building. So there's potential for exploring 'realistic' takes about that situation that aren't just 'and then the zombies eat you.' And for 'idiots bumbling up survival or not respecting nature,' there's Into the Wild, a biopic/fictionalization of the real life death of Christopher McCandless, who tried to live off the land in Alaska and eventually starved to death due to his lack of knowledge, experience, and tools.
These glimmers, intentional or not, are enough for me to not completely dismiss the film. But it's not a great film. The characters are mostly unlikeable (Kelly, Matt) or quiet to the point of not mattering (Ashm, Jocelyn). While it's decently shot, with some decent effects, it might just be me but some shots are very disorienting. Like, suddenly they're filmed in a fish-eye lens or something while doing stuff. Like, there's more than a few shots of Matt with the dying Kelly where his head looks slightly off, like I'm seeing him in a funhouse mirror. And there's a lot of shots of them just moving in nature which could've definitely been trimmed down.
So maybe catch it with friends if you're all big zombie genre fans, but don't go in expecting much.
(Giallo here! John might not dismiss the film, but I will. Go watch Children of the Living Dead, instead. That’s BlackVest’s favorite zombie flick! Thanks for tuning in, Blood Babes!)
