An independent inexpensive horror movie about zombies, shot in Canada by an unknown modern director, is not attractive enough. The topic is worn to the point of ugliness, where some new sparks are almost impossible to carve. Usually the authors bring everything down to a rough thrash. It's full of ketchup splashes, torn props, grotesque on purpose and black humor. Turning to a joke becomes a frequent affair, because often there is nothing else left. However, the current director took a different path, trying to stay serious. Yes, and this road is trodden, like almost everything in zombie horror, and surely the “walking dead” have walked it a hundred times in all their seasons, only on it you can still try to focus on living people in the inanimate background, using the theme metaphor.
However, there is no special metaphor here, but there is a catalyst for exposing human nature. According to the author, it is very unsightly. The plot is standard about a virus, an epidemic, groups of survivors, loitering in search of useful things, marauders, futile laboratory drug development, fatal bites, boarded up windows, barricaded doors - all this cliché that has been filmed hundreds of times and will be used again. Interesting bias in demonstrating complete human helplessness before the situation. The director from the very beginning shows the ideological disunity of the survivors, who must unite for a common goal, but absolutely cannot. Personal relationships do not develop in anyone: in a safe bunker, the military do not find a common language with scientists, and civilians in the wild maraud, are deprived of discipline, demonstratively die in packs - the first meeting of a heavily armed group with zombies ends incredibly sad. In this way, the director sets in a special way, as if warning that he is not going to play an action comic with cool monster hunters, demonstratively sculpting the weak, unfit, the simplest citizens who flee from fear, lose bags, are forced to clutch weapons in their hands, clumsy instructing him anywhere, missing or shooting by mistake in the living. Stupid actions that provoke the eternal aggravation of the situation do not seem like blunders, but become only a harmonious development of the plot about the disease brought to the title of the film, which is massive, consisting of emotions, ambitions and delusions that distinguish divided people from united and purposeful dead.
There are few zombies on the screen. Monsters are like backgrounds. The author does not want to arrange spectacular shootouts with fireworks intestines - no spatter, because he did not have a large budget and obviously aspired to a chamber thriller, soon closing the narrative in the besieged house on the classic libels of the "night of the living dead", where people are able to eat themselves if given free rein. By the way, it is time to pay attention to the slogan: “Survive the night”, making a curtsey towards the mentioned painting by George Romero. It is from the middle that the almost hopeless secondary horror film acquires the features of its own face, creating monsters from people turned into them from fear, despair, unfulfilled hopes, mistakes, gloating, the eternal desire to blame others for personal failures. On interpersonal vicissitudes, there is an interest to track the development of affairs, which, we must give credit, sometimes surprises with a non-trivial arrangement, because there is no division into good and bad, right and wrong either. Of the cast, only Debbie Rochon, specially invited to episodic inserts, depicting depressing laboratory records with a scientist, a frightening chronicle of gradual madness from a meeting with an invincible death virus, is recognizable. The rest are unknown even for the genre, reminiscent of fans in front of the camera, but the key three diligently cope with the roles, reliably demonstrating the whole range of necessary emotions. You believe it, and it’s a huge success.
That's how it turned out. It did not initially claim novelty, being secondary even before viewing. And there is one-sidedness in it, showing people as unpleasant creatures, as if all the most worthy were infected with the zombie virus, and the stupid and low have natural immunity - by the way, the idea is not accidental, which applies to the scenario. Therefore, there is an ideological disagreement with the author for an exaggerated description of the characters and a general pessimistic view of the world, which has illustrative examples from our history, when in the most difficult moments of the most terrible disaster people remained people, and the proximity to death gave rise not to scoundrels, but to heroes who erected man-made and non-man-made monuments to remember this and never lose faith in humanity.
4 out of 10