Run for Blood

I can only think of very few good things to say about this movie. The best way to sum it up is that it's a low-budget zombie horror flick. Don't go in expecting anything more. In fact, the lower you set your expectations, the better off you are. Honestly, this movie was such poor quality I had a hard time sitting through it. The filmmakers seem like they were out to have a good time when they shot this, but the end result is barely tolerable. The movie is barely 75 minutes long, but it felt like it took FOREVER to watch.

The list of what makes this movie near-unwatchable is long, so I'll try to keep this somewhat brief. The first thing I noticed about this movie was the picture quality. I don't know how best to describe it other than saying it looked as if they took a frame or two out every couple seconds. Motion in the movie seemed to have a jerky, stop-n-go feel to it that got old real fast.

On top of the odd choppy visuals, the movie appeared to be shot nearly all hand-held and, therefore, most of the best action was undecipherable. You can barely tell what exactly is going on in some of the zombie attacks. I think the biggest example occurs later in the movie when the protagonists are running through the woods with their newly-acquired weapons, the zombies attack and everything gets shaky. Next thing you know, one of the protagonists is in a car with someone who wasn't there before and they drive off. Moments later, everything goes shaky again the the two of them fall from the sky into a lake. WTF, mate? How did they maneuver from Point A to Point B here....?

The film suffers from the usual low-budget horror issues: terrible continuity, poor acting, horrendous dialogue, a mediocre story, and plot holes the size of the the Grand Canyon. And another thing: what's the deal with the title of this movie? I can't understand how it makes any sort of sense, at all. It's odd when someone asks what you're watching, you answer "Automaton Transfusion", and their eyes glaze over in confusion. Is it a medical documentary? Does it have some to do with machines? No, it's a zombie movie. Bah?

There is one decent quality to this entire film: the gore effects. They weren't spectacular, but they were pretty good for the meager budget they were working with. Rick Gonzalez did a fantastic job with some of the feasting and attack scenes in this movie. Honestly, if you can overlook the other issues with this movie, it's worth at least one watch-through to check out some of the effects.

One final thing (and this is more of a WTF question): after all hell breaks loose at the house party, why did the one blonde chick climb into her CONVERTIBLE and pause to think, as if "Ahhh...a moment of piece of gather my thoughts...". It's not as if the car has windows, a roof, anything to SLOW DOWN an attacking zombie and give her a moment to drive away. All it has to do is CLIMB OVER THE BACK SEAT. Seriouly....come on....

In Downey, the teenagers Chris (Garret Jones), Scott (William Howard Bowman) and Tim (Rowan Bousaid) are best friends and decide to drive to a bar downtown to watch the gig of a grungy band while Chris' girlfriend Jackie (Juliet Reeves) goes to a party with her preppy friends. While heading to downtown, the trio of friends notes that there is no car in the road despite the rush hour and then they find that the streets are empty. When they arrive in their destiny, they are chased by zombies and run to the bar. Chris decides to return to Downey while Jackie and her friends are attacked by a bunch of zombies.

Despite the awful camera-work and the flaws in the screenplay that uses all the clichés of zombie movies, the first half of "Automaton Transfusion" is not so bad. The gore special effects and the acting are indeed very reasonable for a B-movie. There are funny moments and like in many Ed Wood's movies, there is not continuity in many sequences, with the sun shining when it should be night and so on. However, when Chris decides to return to the high-school with his friends, the plot becomes more imbecile culminating with attitude of Scott and the ridiculous explanation for the outbreak given by the military janitor. But the worst is the inconclusive ending "to be continued": the director and writer Steven C. Miller must be kidding. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Yeah. I got my moms camera, and so If you guys aren't doing anything you should totally ask your friends to help. We'll need everyone we can get from school. My dad said he'd be willing to be in it too.

I already have a script I started working on last week. Just get some red food coloring and we'll go from there.

The horror equivalent of cheap porn. Just blood, no substance.

No. Ash would not be proud. Neither should anyone involved with this film.

Please don't bother continuing.

Special thanks: Everyone at highschool

This is a strange hybrid of a movie that had only enough ideas for a trailer (which is what it started out to be, apparently) and a movie that spent what little budget it had on make-up effects. The effects end up being OK (possibly six stars out of ten) but the complete lack of any plot, realistic dialogue, characters, actual acting ability, comprehensible editing, or decent photography shoots the whole thing down. The film-makers did not seem to understand that violent and gory scenes have to balanced against other scenes and that the key to entertainment in horror films is to elicit concern or sympathy from the viewer.

The most irritating aspect of this movie, though, has to be the "synch" problems in many of the scenes. Not audio synch, but frame rate and editing. If you go to the forums, you'll see several explanations of what caused this, ranging from an intentional statement of the director to a setting error on the video editing equipment. Whatever caused it, it's inconsistent from scene to scene and is irritating as hell. I mean, fast zombies are already a bit jerky, but they're really bad in this film.

Don't waste your time on this film.

This was a pile of fecal matter called a movie. Wow. I can't believe how awful it was. Whoever is responsible for those quotes on the box that made me buy it should be hanged. I guess it's my fault for being so naive though. I was just craving a good zombie flick, that's all. What I got was a really bad student film. Like a high school student film. Avoid this one.

Well, it appears that I need this thing to be ten lines long, so I guess I can say a few things about what exactly sucked about this movie (which was pretty much everything, but...). Here we go: first off, the film quality was really really annoying. It looked like it was skipping frames or something. I think maybe they wanted it to have the slight motion blur like 28 Days Later, but they just ended up making it look really bad. The acting was pretty bad, although not completely awful. I think some of the mohawk-guy and the black-guy's reactions were good, but they weren't really given much to work with in the way of a script. And yeah, the "script" was pretty much non-existent. I'm out.