Safrom

Well, this was a low-budget take on a zombie movie, except it was lacking actual zombies.

I hadn't heard about this 2015 Italian horror movie prior to now in 2020, when I was given the chance to sit down and watch it. And it being a horror movie that deals with a zombie (or infectious outbreak), of course I had to watch it - as I love everything zombiesque.

Turns out that "Safrom" from writer and director Nicola Barnaba was a massive waste of time, truth be told. Nothing much of any interest happened throughout the course of the movie, and mostly you just sat there waiting for something to happen, which unfortunately never came to be. The movie was prolonged and boring.

The characters in the movie were bland and generic, especially because there were limited character development, and the interaction between characters just felt stunted and awkward. The actors and actresses they had cast for the roles, however, were adequate enough.

For a zombie movie "Safrom" was just a massive swing and a miss. And it is by no means a noteworthy addition to the zombie genre. There are far older and more interesting Italian zombie movies available. Trust me.

The special effects were almost non-existing, which just further cemented the movie's low-budget feel. And the lack of proper zombies was just atrocious. You can't make a zombie movie and just had a guy with a poncho and a large hat mill around, nor having people with white make-up painted faces pretend to be zombies. It just didn't work, whatsoever. In fact, it was even below the usual low budget bad zombie make-up and special effects.

I am rating "Safrom" a mere two out of ten stars, because I was in no way or manner entertained, nor were I enjoying the storyline. It is definitely not a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time. It came without notice, and it will fade into oblivion without notice.

Starts really well with two good actors (Valerio in particular) that hold the attention for the first 30 minutes or so and combined with some some good photography and lots of old 70's style camera shots reminiscent of Hammer House Of Horror but then when the special effects kick in that is when it all goes downhill........sadly.

Then we have the supposedly Safrom research laboratory which is inexplicably set inside an abandoned old crumbling warehouse in the middle of an abandoned industrial estate and of course we never get to see the actual laboratory as the $1000 budget was obviously gone by then.

It then descends into ultra low budget effects and some poor acting from the extras, in comes the heavy metal Italian soundtrack followed by some Indi europop, throw in a minute of computer generated graphics done on a ZX Spectrum in the last 5 minutes and just goes down the butthole from there on in and ends inexplicably with no ending - presumably the budget had run out completely at that point and they needed an extra 50 p in the meter - Shame as it started so well but I always review movies based on budget, acting , story etc so it gets a fair 3 out of 10 hatchets on my horror scale so less than average Italo-horror fair - Dawn of The Dead or Zombie Flesh Eaters it is not as it only registers one on my scare-omometer!