Die Horde

I have watched this film moments after seeing a low budget German zombie flick and so I could see the differences between the two immediately. While Rammbock was low budget, this one had lots of weapons and effects and plenty of gore; La Horde had superviolent gangsters and cops (the French kind, a la Luc Besson), the other one had painfully average people; the Germans had natural reactions, while the French were complete idiots; German film had believability while La Horde was ridiculous just when starting to like it. And so on and so on...

Bottom line: La Horde had the ingredients for a great movie. I was expecting (maybe that was my problem) a combination between From Dusk Till Dawn and Nid de Guêpes. It was neither, as the characters wasted bullet after precious bullet shooting zombies in the body (even if they noticed the only effective shots where legs and head) or shouting in anger and/or fear. And the thing is, in France, old men and young women are a lot scarier than zombies. Eriq Ebouaney was the highlight of the movie, but mainly because of his almighty blackness and acting, not his script lines.

There is always an argument among zombie purists. Should the walk slow as in most zombie films, or can they run? This is the running type, so the purists may be disappointed.

Yes, there was blood and gore - plenty of it. No self-respecting zombie movie can exist without it, just as no self-respecting vampire movie would eschew blood for glitter.

It was non-stop action from start to finish. As you would expect in real life, it was loud, very loud. These people were literally screaming for their lives.

The ending was predicable, but effective nonetheless. Just could not take my eyes off Claude Perron (Amélie) throughout the film. She did a superb job, as did Eriq Ebouaney (Lumumba, Hit-man, Transporter 3).

The film has a frantic pace and the first scene is the discovery of a police officer found dead in a rubbish pit. At the funeral his colleagues vow to kill the men responsible and track them down to a condemned and abandoned tower block on the city outskirts. The raid isn't too successful and the police find themselves at the mercy of the violent gang members. However, something stirs outside in the night and within minutes all hell breaks loose. The cops and gang members must reluctantly work together if they want to escape from the tower block alive. There are one or two scenes of complete overkill and plenty of blood to keep zombie fans happy. Don't really know to refer to them as zombies or not but they are like the infected in 28 days later. The film only really slows down in the middle for a short period before heading to a bloody and violent conclusion.

Certainly one of the better zombie films to be released in the last few years and very enjoyable.

A crew of cops and gangsters fight their way through a zombie apocalypse while interacting warily and sometimes violently with each other.

This is one of the best zombie movies I've seen in a while, it's surprising that I hadn't heard of it before. The zombies are the usual Romero type, although they do run instead of lurch at times. The usual zombie rules apply; shoot it in the head, and all that. The difference here is that several of the living engage in fist fights with zombies when a gun isn't handy, you don't see that very much. The fights tend to be quick, realistic and brutal. That was interesting.

The tension between cops and gangsters goes on until the very end, adding a bit of a twist to the plot. The acting is good, the production values high, and the special effects are good and gory. This isn't the backyard zombie movie your brother-in-law Cletus made with his camcorder and five drunken friends; it's a decently budgeted, well acted and somewhat original zombie movie with atmosphere.

I recommend this film to any zombie flick fan. It's in French, but there isn't that much dialog so the subtitles aren't obtrusive.

The French film "La Horde" doesn't exactly bring a fresh approach to the over saturated zombie genre, yet is still entertaining enough for what it is. It benefits from its breakneck pace and intensity, and is just as much about character as it is bloodshed. (Not that it skimps in the gore department at all, though, far from it.) A quartet of detectives - Aurore (Claude Perron), Ouessem (Jean-Pierre Martins), Jimenez (Aurelien Recoing), and Tony (Antoine Oppenheim), find the dead body of a colleague and turn rogue, vowing to avenge his death. Unfortunately, things don't go as planned: first, their quarry, gangster Adewale (Eriq Ebouaney), is able to get the drop on them, and start torturing them, then this big mess becomes an even bigger one when scores upon scores of the living dead start to overwhelm humanity, as the apocalypse seems to have begun. While this is all pretty predictable in terms of the script, "La Horde" does manage to entertain by ensuring that its audience never gets bored. It starts quietly enough, but soon it's kicked itself into a high gear and has stayed there. Some zombie cinema lovers may take exception to the fact that these are very FAST zombies, as well as to the generous array of digital rather than practical carnage, but if you don't concern yourself too much with those elements, you may find this a reasonable viewing experience. The characters, by and large, are NOT sympathetic, including the cops, so the lack of rooting interest may make this hard for some people to follow. Still, as in any film with a similar premise, there is a certain amusement in seeing cops and crooks alike being forced to team up in order to survive - and, as we can see, the crooks aren't completely one- dimensional. The acting is good for this sort of thing. Both Martins and Ebouaney have a formidable screen presence, and Martins has one hell of a great exit where he truly goes down fighting. While "La Horde" may not be among the most stimulating films of its kind - at least in an intellectual way - one could definitely do far worse, as it manages to maintain a fever pitch for much of its duration. Seven out of 10.