Shadows of the Dead

Shadows of the Dead (2004)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Fangoria award winner has a doctor slowly breaking down while treating victims of a zombie outbreak. He jumps in his car to get away from it all but he ends up wrecking and among the living dead. This is a rather hit and miss film but for the most part it works. The zombie genre has had so many great and awful films in it with more and more being made each year that it's hard to come up with something original. This film has a twist ending, which is clearly original and on that level this is worth watching. I really enjoyed the cinematography and the ending was very well handled by the young director. What didn't really work was the opening sequences.

It starts out intelligent, but I sigh once I see the doctor taking his sweet time to knock out a zombie that's just bitten a poor woman in a hospital, it seems rather dull, due to the low-budget action and its lack of sound effects, plus when the zombie came after the woman again it just grabbed her throat and pressed her against the wall...yeah, lame.

But then "Moonlight Sonata" by Beethoven starts, and everything just goes out of control! In the span of less than ten minutes, this film managed to drill a hole of terror into my brain and leave me stunned. The end is just confusing, but most short films are like that, as to how and why the doctor was tied up in a basement by an unseen antagonist. The creature that crawls to his sliced stomach will leave you thrown, due to the film's wild cinematography and the makeup. Twice as freaky as "The Ring."

Beautifully imaginative, confusing maybe but still it won my heart.