Day Nine: Grey Knight (1993)

This is another film that I really wasn't sure about before pulling it up on the old Netflix Streaming.

Grey Knight is a Civil War Zombie film, although the zombies in this are a little bit vampire and a little bit ghost, as well. They can't cross running water, have aversions to silver, and only come out at night.

But, at the same time, they're more like the Nazi zombies of Dead Snow, in that they're agile and fully conscious. And their origins involve African magic instead of your traditional vampire source material.

That said, this is really more of a vampire movie than a zombie film, but it's really not a vampire movie either.

Does that even make sense?

The source of the zombification is part of what makes this both interesting and a little puzzling. Somewhere, underground, live The Makers. And they bring the dead back to life. An African tribe that nobody fucked with, was fucked with by white slave traders and some sort of plague was brought to America. Is it vampirism? Is it zombieism? Who knows.

Regardless, The Makers are over here now, and as the Civil War is winding down, a group of soldiers from both sides are slaughtering people and recruiting the newly dead. Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) is recruited by Ray Wise (Twin Peaks) - at the suggestion of Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now) - who then recruits captured Confederate leader Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law) to track down his old allies (one of whom is Billy Bob Thornton (Slingblade), sort of).

There are a lot of recognizable names in this (including a short appearance by David Arquette and a large, but silent, part by Cynda Williams (One False Move)), and the director, George Hickenlooper, also directed Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse and the short, Some Folks Call It A Slingblade, which might explain Sheen and Thornton's involvement. It was written by Matt Greenberg, who was also responsible for Halloween H20, Reign of Fire, and the recent 1408.

Okay, that's the pedigree, but is the film any good?

Surprisingly, yes. Although, as I noted, it's more of a vampire/ghost film, it's nicely put together and aside from a few narrative glitches here and there, isn't a bad way to pass an evening. Corbin Bernsen is actually very good as the Southern POW forced to hunt down his old regiment, and is about the only character with an actual development arc. This is his film and he does a fine job with it.

This isn't the best film we've watched this week, but it's not the worst. And for one that actually takes itself seriously and doesn't fall back on easy comedy and gore, it really does stand on its own as one of the better films we've watched this time out. I wouldn't say that you HAVE to see it, but it's not a waste of your time.

Day Eight: Dead Snow (2009)

Now this is what I'm talking about!

I wasn't sure about this one at first, but I'd heard nothing but good things about Dead Snow, a Norwegian zombie comedy pitting a group of twenty-somethings against Zombie Nazis, so we figured we had to fit it in the schedule this year.

And while I don't think Dr. Girlfriend enjoyed this one as much as I did, I think we could agree that it was one of the best zombie films of the 2010 Easter/Zombie Marathon.

Although, to be fair, until the zombies really come out to play, this was bordering on just too tedious and self-aware for my tastes. Now, don't get me wrong. I love it when a film references the classics, even when it's just by doing something cheesy like naming the characters after famous directors (like Fred Dekker did in Night of the Creeps).

It adds to the fun, when you suddenly recognize a name-check or see an scene that echos one from an older film.

I'm not too thrilled, however, with films that have characters openly referencing and quoting classic films as fans of those films. A cool T-shirt is one thing, but when a character starts commenting on how much their trip to a cabin in the woods is like Evil Dead, and then starts discussing the relationship between Evil Dead and Evil Dead II, it's a bit too much.

I get it. The creators like those classic films. Discussing them inside the narrative of a film inspired by them is too Meta for me.

I suppose it could be done right, but usually, as with Dead Snow, it was just heavy-handed and annoying. Your mileage may vary.

But that's really nit-picking. Once we get past the introductions of the characters, as well as the "fun in the snow" montages, things start to really pick up. The plot is interesting, establishing why there are Nazi zombies running around in the first place, and the acting is effective. There were very few rough patches there.

And the gore effects are superb. As are the kills themselves.

This film brought two things to the table that I hadn't really seen before (or if I have, I've forgotten): zombies that are cunning, devious, and are ready to punch you in the face before they kill you; and a sex scene in an outhouse.

Yes. I did just say that.

One of the characters goes to the outhouse to take a dump, and a lady friend follows shortly thereafter and proceeds to sit on his lap and, um, you know. Never mind the logistics and the weather.

Anyway, it was the Nazi Zombies that really made this one interesting. Their leader, Standartenführer Herzog, orchestrates his zombie troops to converge on the isolated cabin with a motivation that makes them seem more like zombie Pirates than Nazis. All of this leads to a final confrontation between the last survivors and the Nazi hordes. There are horribly violent deaths, horribly violent self-mutilation, and laugh-out-loud moments one after the other.

I actually laughed so hard at one point I had tears running down my face.

Dr. Girlfriend looked at me as if I was a fool.

So, again, your mileage may vary.

But me, I liked this one a lot. So far, it's second only to Pontypool and rivals Night of the Creeps in my book.

Day Seven: Plaga Zombie - Zona Mutante (2001)

Day Seven brings us the Argentinian zombie-comedy, Plaga Zombie: Mutant Zone, or Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante in the original language). I'm really not sure why the American release only translates half of the title.

Oh well.

This is a sequel to 1997's Plaga Zombie, and if I had known that before sitting down to watch this one, I would have searched it out and made a double feature out of them. Only I'm not sure I would have been able to sit through both of them back-to-back if the first one is anything like this.

And after checking out the trailer to Plaga Zombie, it looks like it was. Only with a smaller budget.

So, this is probably the only one you have to worry about watching. If you worry about things like that.

I do. I'm mentally ill like that.

Our main characters are named John West (a western-themed wrestler), Bill Johnson (a med-student, kung-fu ass-kicker), and Max Giggs (computer nerd and completely insane). The actors playing Bill and Max, Pablo Parés and Hernán Sáez, wrote and directed both this film and the original. Berta Muñiz (John West) co-wrote the original with them.

That in itself makes this an impressive little piece of work, if you ask me, but maybe a little bittersweet as well. You see, these three guys have been working together since 1991, making short films, and released Plaga Zombie in 1997 to the joy of Argentinian gore fans. Until the sequel was released in 2001, Plaga Zombie's fans called it the best Argentinian gore film ever.

But for reasons unknown to me (I'm really just too lazy to look into it at the moment), they stopped working together after Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante.

Anyway, back to the review.

If you like your zombie horror with a healthy dose of slapstick comedy, then this is the one for you. It's gory as it can get, with cheesy effects that bring films like Evil Dead II (with a smaller budget) to mind. And that's definitely the mark they're shooting for. There's very little serious in this one, making it a welcome breath of fresh air after The Zombie Diaries.

Apparently, in the first film we discovered that an alien race had made a deal with the American Government to sample a strange alien virus on an isolated test community. As you could probably guess, this virus turned the infected into zombie mutants and the disease quickly spread, overrunning the entire city. Our heroes, John, Bill, and Max barely escaped with their lives.

Unfortunately, they were then captured by the FBI and, as this film opens, are dumped back into the city as it is closed off and scheduled to be destroyed. We can't have any surviving witnesses after all.

What follows is a pretty entertaining splatterstick romp as the boys try to survive long enough to decode a government map showing the only way out of town, before everyone is killed. There are a few very nice twists and turns, and the zombie attacks are always fun (even if most of the zombies are just running around, not really attacking anyone) and gory.

Any film gets bonus points from me when one of the heroes twists off someone's arm and uses it as a weapon. The same with pulling out spines or carrying around lengths of intestine to use as rope when needed.

Plus, we even get a little character development, sort-of. I mentioned that Max went crazy, right? Well, when the boys discover another survivor named Max, who also wants to be best friends with John West, will crazy-Max's jealousy tear the boys apart? Or just the new-Max?

Sure, it's all pretty silly. But at least it's intentionally silly. That counts for something.

It's stuff like that that pushed this film a little higher than three stars, but not quite into the four star range. So, on a free scale, this would get 3.5 stars from me. On Netflix's scale it gets 3.

Day Six: The Zombie Diaries (2006)

So, after watching these films, I'm going over to Netflix and rating them. The only problem with that is there are no half stars. It's all or nothing, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.

Because of this, more films are being ranked at 3 stars than actually deserve three stars. I'm giving 2.5 and 3.5 star movies 3 stars.

This is one of those cases.

The Zombie Diaries is a low-budget, independent British horror film shot entirely on hand-held cameras. It functions, as the title suggests, as a video diary of people going through a zombie plague outbreak in England.

It's not a bad idea. Hell, George Romero himself used the exact same idea for Diary of the Dead, which was released at about the same time as this film.

Zombie Diaries is a very quick exercise in nihilism at only 80 minutes long, so it's definitely worth the time to watch, however, be warned. It's really only the last 40 minutes or so that are anything interesting or original.

Which is why I'd rank this at 2.5 stars on an actual scale.

The set-up is slow and boring, as we follow around characters that we don't really get to know, thanks to the limitations of the plot device of filming with hand-held cameras. You see, our camera work is coming from a news crew on their way to interview a farmer about having to kill all of his chickens in response to an oncoming virus. Of course, everyone in the farmer's town is dead and zombified, but for some reason they wait until dark to come out and chase our "heroes" out of town and into the woods.

That occurs in one of the recurring annoying "I'm running through the dark carrying the camera" sequences.

At the same time (sort of), another group of people are trying to survive, and as luck would have it, videotaping the whole thing. This second group is even less compelling than the first, as the actors are less successful with their improvising. Oh yeah. A lot of this film is improvised dialogue, according to the Wikipedia site.

After putting off several urges to stop the DVD and go to bed, Dr. Girlfriend and I were rewarded with the back half of the film.

We discover another group of survivors; this time a group that is organized and trying to make a life for themselves. This is where the other two narratives converge and we find out what's happened to those characters.

And what's happened is pretty messed up. This is what raised this from a 2 star film to a 2.5 (or 3, according to Netflix). I'm not going to tell you too much about it, and be warned, the Wikipedia page spoils the ending (which is why I'm not linking to it).

But I'll just say this. Of all the films we've watched so far, this is the most nihilistic and the one that takes itself the most seriously. There really isn't anything humorous about anything in this film. None of the characters have any real personality beyond reacting to the zombie situation. We don't know who these people were before and we don't find out. The only character with much personality is a dick.

The whole thing is bleak and boring until you get to the last half. Then it's bleak and interesting and decidedly disturbing.

Which almost makes up for the first half.

So if you've got a little over an hour to waste, this is an okay way of passing that time. But there's really not much here you haven't seen before, the gore effects are okay, and the acting is passable at best. There's a kernel of a good idea here, but the urge to use hand-held cameras and justify it in-narrative kind of spoils the whole thing.

I'd much rather have seen a traditionally structured and filmed movie with this plot.

Day Five Point Two: Night of the Creeps (1986)

Night of the Creeps is awesome.

What? You want more?

Okay. Night of the Creeps was written and directed by Fred Dekker, who would go on to write and direct another cult classic, The Monster Squad.

If you haven't seen Monster Squad, then shame on you. If you have seen it, but didn't care for it, then you must have never been a prepubescent boy who loved the Universal Pictures stable of monsters.

Sure, that lets a lot of you off the hook, I guess. But dammit! That movie is gold.

As is this one.

What we've got here is an alien invasion of sorts. An alien experiment is jettisoned from an alien spacecraft in the opening moments of the film. The experimental container lands on Earth back in 1959 and infects a college jock.

Cut to 1986 and the misadventures of two college students just trying to find nice girls and fall in love. In a misguided attempt to impress a young lady, these gentlemen decide to pledge a fraternity (one which will never actually let them join, of course), and their hazing involves stealing a corpse. The corpse, naturally, turns out to the the cryogenically frozen body with mysterious alien worms inside (the alien experiment, for those of you not keeping up).

The alien worms gestate in the brains of mammals, living or dead, causing an outbreak of zombie-ism on the college campus.

That's enough plot.

Let me just say that this is a low-budget horror film made by a man who clearly loves horror films. Nearly all the characters have names inspired by the greats in the horror film industry. There are narrative references to all sorts of horror precursors. And best of all, it doesn't suck while doing all of this.

It actually tells an entertaining story with likable characters while both advancing the genre and respecting the traditions.

This is one of the good ones, folks.

If you haven't seen it, then make some time for it. If you've already seen it, shouldn't you check it out again? How long has it been?

For me it was around fifteen years.

It doesn't take itself too seriously, but it does take itself serious enough to make it more than a shallow parody. It's a worthy entry into the pantheon of zombie film, if you ask me.

It's not Top Ten material, but it's not too far off.

Day Five: Night of the Comet (1984)

Okay. I'll admit it.

I wasn't expecting this to be good at all.

I mean, look at that tag line. "They came. They shopped. They saved the world."

Come on. Right?

I was in high school when this film was released, and thought it looked like some completely stupid shit. So I never watched it.

Never even had an urge to watch it.

Well, I was a dumbass. Night of the Comet is pretty damn entertaining.

Sure, it's hampered by an Eighties soundtrack, where they had to get someone to cover "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." Sure, it's about two teenage girls in a post-apocalyptic wasteland version of LA.

But, lo and behold, it's not just some stupid valley girl comedy with "zombies."

What we've actually got here is a story, not really a zombie story, but oh well, about the end of the world. Sure, these two sisters are California girls, but they're got an absent dad who's a Green Beret and just happened to have trained them to fight and use weapons.

That in itself adds a layer of entertainment that I would have never imagined from the reputation of the film. I mean, come on, check out the trailer.



See? They really didn't even take it seriously when they were promoting it.

But the hints are there. If you pay attention.

Again, as with most of the films we're watching, this isn't your high quality entertainment. But so far as the zombie sub-genre goes, this is not only watchable, it's downright entertaining and, dare I say it, good.

It doesn't go too far into the characters' psychological reactions to being some of the few survivors after a comet annihilates the majority of humanity, but it does pay attention to the psychological effects. These aren't just Valley Girls. There's a hint of character work going on.

Sure, in the end it's one-dimensional and cartoonish, but damn it, it's fun.

Is that too much to ask?

Oh! And Commander Chakotay (Robert Beltran) from Star Trek: Voyager is in it as Hector.















That's worth something, right?

Day Four Point Two: Sugar Hill (1974)

Tonight's second feature was much better.

Sugar Hill (also known as The Zombies of Sugar Hill) is a blackspoitation revenge film with a heavy dose of Voodoo Justice.

Sugar Hill's fiance is killed by gangsters because he won't sell his club (Club Haiti), so they beat him to death in his own parking lot. Sugar's related to a Voodoo Priestess who summons Baron Samedi to help her get revenge. He gives her control over a zombie army and she kills her enemies one by one.

And that's pretty much it for the story.

But it's a lot of fun getting there.

The deaths are not as gruesome as they could be, but they're working with a pretty limited budget. The most impressive effect was definitely the eyes of the zombies. They looked as though they were made of silver, or highly reflective glass. I assume they were just covers, but whatever they were, the zombies were creepy and might just show up in my nightmares tonight.

Marki Bey sells her role as Sugar as hard as she can. When she has to feel grief she shouts at the sky. When she's getting her revenge, she's hard ass. And she looks good doing it, too, with her straightened hair being replaced by an afro whenever she's in Kill Whitey mode. It was actually a subtle touch, and I liked it.

Don Pedro Colley as Baron Samedi also does a pretty good job with his role. The Baron is always around, using different accents and dialects to draw in his prey, before setting his zombie hordes on them. I'm such a Voodoo sucker, though, I enjoy just about any appearance by Baron Samedi in just about any Voodoo tinged film.

If you can track this one down, and have a few beers handy, I'd definitely recommend checking it out. It's not the best movie we've watched so far, but it's definitely not the worst.

And there really are zombies in it, so that's a plus!

Here's an added treat! The trailer!

Day Four: Vengeance of the Zombies (1973)

Ah, Paul Naschy. What would Spanish Horror Film be without you?

Don't answer that.

Vengeance of the Zombies is a film that is entertaining, but really not very good. Although, to give Naschy credit, he doesn't look like a young Dick Cheney in this one (like he did in Frankenstein's Bloody Terror), but he's still one shorty and meaty dude. And he's got his shirt off for a while in this one.

Not to give anything thing away, but Naschy plays an Indian mystic named Krisna, his hideously burnt and insane Voodoo powered brother, Kantaka, and Satan in a poorly orchestrated nightmare sequence.

It seems that Kantaka was lusting after an English girl many years ago, but she was just teasing him. So, what else could he do? He raped her. That's what.

So her parents and three other English families all got together, trapped Kantaka someplace and set it on fire. Thinking he was dead, they went on their merry way, until now, years later, each family has a daughter that dies mysteriously, only to be reborn as Kantaka's zombies.

But we don't get all that at once. Instead we get a lot of Krisna acting enlightened before bedding the only surviving daughter of one of Kantaka's targeted families. I think Kantaka was controlling Krisna with Voodoo, too, but to be honest, I kind of lost interest in this one as it went along.

Even though there were boobies.

The first boobies of the zombie fest, actually.

That's pretty much it for this one. Tedious and not titillating in the least. I think one would have to be intoxicated to really enjoy this one. It's not even a so bad it's good kind of thing. It's just blah.

In an introductory segment, Paul Naschy discusses just how crazy and scary this film is. In his words, this is the most frightening Spanish horror film of all time.

That's just sad.

Day Three: Isle of the Dead (1945)

Day three brings us Isle of the Dead (1945), starring Boris Karloff (technical difficulties forced a scheduling switch, with The Zombie Diaries being moved to Thursday). And while there is sort of a resurrection in the film, it's really more of a psychological thriller.

Set on a Greek island during the 1912 War, we follow a group of people quarantined there due to an outbreak of the Plague. Or some form of plague anyway. One that makes you act drunk, stumble around, and then die quietly.

But all is not right. The superstitious old Greek lady in the group thinks that young Thea (Ellen Drew) is not just young and healthy, taking care of a sickly female friend. Instead, she believes that Thea is actually a vampiric demon known as a vorvolaka.

Thematically, this is a very nice little exploration of the conflicts between beliefs in science and superstition, particularly when people are confronted with a form of death that pays no heed to either ideology. Along with this, there's a very subtle and powerful condemnation of war as we open on a Greek battlefield.

As Karloff, as General Nikolas Pherides crosses a nighttime wasteland that is literally overflowing with corpses. Corpses that must be cleared away each night to avoid the spread of disease. Ironically, then, the General is then quarantined himself later.

All in all, this is a beautifully shot film. It is not, however, a zombie film.

Karloff's performance is suitably creepy as he slowly slips from being a science-minded military man into a superstitious, plague-infested zealot. His gradual obsession with proving that Thea is a monster and then his determination to kill her accordingly is all pretty horrific. Particularly his final scene, crawling slowly across a darkened floor, dying, yet still staring upwards at Thea, wishing only to kill her before he passes.

I just gave myself a chill. Ugh.

But what about that resurrection, you ask?

That's another pretty creepy part, particularly if you're claustrophobic (which, I imagine is why Martin Scorsese puts this film in his 11 Scariest of All Time list). I'm hesitant to spoil any more of the film, but I guess as soon as one character starts mentioning their overpowering fear of being buried alive, you kind of know what's coming.

So, overall, this is a pretty good film; it's just not a zombie film.

Day Two Point Two: Boy Eats Girl (2005)

Since Dr. Girlfriend got home early from work tonight, we decided to squeeze in an extra film today. So, the Irish zombie film, Boy Eats Girl made the grade.

And did it ever!

This is three for three so far, quality-wise, as this is an entertaining, well-acted, nicely-directed, and bloody gory film.

If you're looking for a traditional zombie film, this might not be for you. However, if you're a fan of British comedy TV series The In-Betweeners, this might be right up your alley.

You see, most of the film is spent following four teens around their school. However, one of the teens, lead Nathan (David Leon) has a crush on his friend Jessica (Samantha Mumba), but won't act on it, despite it being obvious that she fancies him right back.

When his buddies set it up so that he has to confront her and tell her how he feels, she doesn't show (thanks to her overbearing father), so he goes home, gets drunk, and accidentally hangs himself. Luckily it's not auto erotic asphyxiation.

Nope, it's just a concerned mom bursting into the room while he's toying with the idea of suicide by hanging.

As luck would have it, mom works cleaning up at the local church and had just recently stumbled upon a secret basement where horrible things are kept. Horrible things like a book of voodoo, which she then steals and uses to bring her dead son back to life.

As you can probably guess, hi-jinks ensue.

This is a cleverly written film that goes way out of its way to make you like the characters before subjecting them to zombie horrors. And the script is nicely structured so that nothing just happens without being set up well in advance. Unlike Evil, this time when the heroine starts using kick-boxing skills we've already seen her practicing at the gym earlier.

And while there's not a lot of gore throughout the film, our climax of the film does a pretty good job of making up lost time in a scene that brings the end of Peter Jackson's classic Dead Alive to mind.

So far, this year's marathon is going much better than expected. We'll see how that holds up tomorrow, when we watch the British film, The Zombie Diaries.

Day Two: To Kako (Evil) (2005)

After the sheer joy we experienced with Pontypool, both Dr. Girlfriend and I were a little apprehensive about jumping into what is billed as "The First Greek Zombie Film!"

First tries are rarely all that, especially in the world of zombie films, but since we really want to get an international feel to this marathon, we gave this a shot.

And to our surprise, we really enjoyed it!

To Kako, or Evil as it is titled in English, isn't the best zombie film we've seen. But it has enough good stuff going for it that it's nowhere near the worst.

In stark contrast to the confined anxiety of Pontypool, Evil, once the zombies start appearing, immediately takes it to the streets.

Here's the setup. Three construction workers (or something) accidentally discover a cave during the course of their day. Naturally curious, they lower a ladder down and check it out. This exposes them to a very Evil Dead approach of some sort of bodiless EVIL. The next thing we know, our "heroes" are continuing with their day. One is home with his wife and daughter getting ready for dinner. The second fellow is at the big soccer game. And the third is out at the club with his girlfriend (who he's ready to dump).

Then, at exactly the same time, all three of them begin gagging and coughing before their eyes roll up in their heads and they leap on anyone close and begin biting them for all their worth. The bitees are instantly infected and leap on someone close to them.

As you can imagine, the attacks in the club and in the stands of the big game are bloody and violent and within minutes we have zombie hordes running through the streets. The family man kills his wife, but his teen-age daughter runs away, finding help with a neighbor lady before both of them are chased down the fire escape and are forced to hide in an alley.

I really liked the open air threat, and Evil director, Yorgos Noussias (who also wrote the screenplay), dies his best to invoke films like 28 Days Later with the emptied-out Athens that our actual heroes have to survive in.

So the set-up is well done, and once we get our main characters introduced, I actually liked them, as well. They're kind of stereotyped, but each actor does a good job at making their character believable; even the comic-relief cabbie. The weakest link in the acting is the fellow who plays the soldier they stumble across later in the film. He's just not very good at making his character seem crazy, instead he just seems like a guy "acting" crazy.

And in a lesser-quality film it wouldn't be that problematic for me.

But then again, we do really have two types of films going on here. There's a lot of pretty serious moments that play well. However, at the same time, whenever our heroes are attacked by zombies, we start getting more splatterstick humor than realistic responses.

Which isn't a bad thing, really. But I had a hard time jumping back and forth between tones. When the bitchy girlfriend suddenly starts using kung-fu on zombies, it was just kind of absurd. And not in the good, Existential way.

But with that said, this was a very well-made film. Noussias isn't afraid to have some fun with the editing, giving us a lot of shock-inducing quick cuts and a few split screen shots reminiscent of what you'd see on 24. There were a few places where it was a little too "music video" but overall, it was a fresh and exciting piece of work.

Something that isn't really commented on, but seems to be a nod to vampire classic From Dusk Til Dawn, the zombies are not what you'd call stout. Their heads can be knocked off with a punch, arms come off if you pull on them, you can punch holes in them, and they die just like ordinary living people. You don't have to have a head shot.

This provides opportunities for some funny/violent moments and also allows for some very good gore effects. There was some money spent on the gore, from old-school ripping out of intestines and throats to heads being chopped down the middle or exploding in gunfire.

So, all in all, this is one that's worth checking out. The tone is a little uneven, but if you can get past that, there's some good work going on.

And it was successful enough that a sequel is in the works: To Kako 2: Evil in the Time of Heroes, starring the ever-genre-friendly Billy Zane.

Seriously.

And it looks like it takes up exactly where Part One leaves off. And jumps back to Ancient Greece, as well.

Squee!

Here's the trailer!

Day One: Pontypool (2009)

And away we go!

First up this week is Canadian "zombie" film, Pontypool, directed by Bruce McDonald and scripted/adapted by Tony Burgess from his novel, Pontypool Changes Everything.

We weren't really sure what to expect, having only heard that the zombie plague in this film is spread via language. It's an interesting and original concept, but how would they be able to pull it off on-screen?

Fantastically!

The film could, with some imaginative staging, be adapted to the stage. The cast is made up of only three main characters, with a fourth showing up later in the story. Of course, by that time we're sort of back down to three characters again.

I'm trying not to spoil anything, so I'll just leave it vague like that.

The story is set in a small radio station, headquartered in the basement of an old church in the small town of Pontypool, Ontario. Our main character, DJ Grant Mazzy, is a grizzled talk-radio host who has just fired his manager for getting him this nowhere job in this nowhere town. His producer, Sydney Briar, just wants him to do his job (school closing announcements, obits, weather, etc.) without too much drama. At least at this early stage in their employment relationship. Their assistant, handling the phones and feeding Mazzy info and news, is a hometown hero, Laurel-Ann Drummond, recently-returned from Afghanistan.

After a strange start to the day, on his way in to work, Mazzy sees a woman by the road muttering strange things and then disappearing into the darkness, we spend the rest of the film in the radio station as riots begin breaking out across town. And this is where the film really starts to shine.

Stephen McHattie, as Mazzy, does a great job as the crotchety and cantankerous DJ and it his and Lisa Houle's (Sydney Briar) chemistry that really make the film work. McDonald also sidesteps the budgetary demands of filming a widespread zombie outbreak by having callers describe what's happening rather than showing it.

I wasn't sure if this would really work, but it does. It works very well.

And when there is a chance for gore, the film doesn't disappoint there, either.

It was really the novelty of the way the infection is spread through language that really won me over, though. It seems that the English language has become infected. Not entirely, you see, but only certain words. Once you say or hear these words, they start to get a grip inside of you and take you over.

It's a very English Major kind of zombie film, which is why I suppose Dr. Girlfriend and I both enjoyed it so much.

This one is highly recommended!

My only concern is that the first film of the week was so good it may make the rest of the films pale in comparison. Hopefully not.

Next up: The first Greek zombie film! It's called To Kako! Or, in English, Evil!