Stalled

A man is stuck in a toilet stall during the zombie apocalypse. Sold!

Simple and effective horror comedy concept... totally amateurish and inept execution. The disappointment here is that with some actual talent behind and in front of the camera, this could have been a real gem.

Problems begin pretty much from the opening shot when you realise the lighting and cinematography are absolutely horrid. The film achieves this really cheap and cheerless look. It resembles an episode from one of those bad teen TV soap operas from the 1990's. This should immediately alert you to the fact that you're watching student filmmakers running amok with a budget.

Uh-oh.

Okay, so the cheap look can be forgiven because this is lo-fi comedy horror stuff. Fair enough right? Surely the film will make-up for that with wit and invention and gags. Right? Right??!

No.

The next major (and most crucial) problem; the writer of "Stalled", Dan Palmer, is also its star. And this is one of those writers that fancies himself an actor. And not only does he not have the chops to carry an entire feature film by himself, he can't deliver a single line of dialogue with conviction. It's as if he's trying to remember how his script sounded in his head when he came up with the dialogue. He may as well be reading the script to himself on the toilet. He's awful. If Palmer had taken his own ego and misguided acting aspirations out of the equation, they could have cast a semi-decent comedic actor in the lead.

It starts off with the promise of a somewhat "silent" horror comedy where our main character doesn't seem to speak much, if at all. But then the dialogue kicks in and, since Dan Palmer has no idea how to keep the story going without it, we get endless "f bombs" being dropped every other sentence, horribly muddled and dull lines delivered by people who just can't act, and long interludes of Palmer monloguing and emoting with embarrassing consequences. Accentuating sentences in the wrong places, forcing emotion with no help from the clueless director, Christian James.

Add in some unconvincing zombie make-up effects and mostly unfunny gags, and you have all the ingredients of a desperate "Shaun of the Dead" knock-off without the wit, invention or the talent.

It's a shame because it's got some smart ideas and a few neat ways of sustaining its simple concept over 80 minutes. I even quite liked the punchline at the end but the journey there was so unimaginative and glib that ultimately the whole experience smacked of a bunch of student filmmakers who got a little money together and extended a short film concept into a feature.

And that's what this should have been - a student short film and nothing more.

As much as I like to support independent films, when they are this amateur and poorly executed in (almost) every area, it's advisable to warn others against crossing paths with it.

Sorry "Stalled" but you really do belong in the toilet.

Shaun of the Dead ? No. Waste of time ? Not if you love zombies. Everyone knows that zombies have experienced a resurgence of sorts from its heyday back in the late 70's, early 80's. Problem is, how many different ways can you tell a story involving re-animated corpses ? We've got Nazi Zombies, Ninja Zombies, Zombie Gangs, Zombies on a train, plane or automobile, etc. There's even a TV series, The Walking Dead, which simply uses zombies as a prop to distract from the real story about survivor interaction. "Stalled" is (not just) another installment in the Zombie Comedy genre, the best of which started with the above-mentioned "Shaun of the Dead" and continued with "Zombieland"... Stalled is an inventive take on the whole "holed up" premise started way back with the original; Romero's Night of the Living Dead. But instead of a farmhouse, it takes place in a women's commode. It's got it's funny bits, it's got lots of blood, and it gets right to the action; it's even has a little sexual thrill (nothing explicit); that's it's positives. What it's got going against it is, it's fairly predictable and it's just not as funny as it thinks it is...but, with zombie comedies, they've got a huge yardstick to measure up to with Shaun. For those that view zombies as just another horror character, Stalled may seem like so much crap, but for the true zombie connoisseur, it's an inventive way to tell another zombie story. Any movie that can hold your attention and (nearly) everything takes place in a restroom, must have something going for it.

Plot

A janitor gets trapped in a women's restroom and encounters an all-out attack by a horde of zombies.

Cast

Unfamiliar with anyone involved

Verdict

I don't know why but I was quite excited after reading the premise many years ago when it got added to my watchlist. It must be 6-7 years since that day and I've only just got round to it.

Now I'm a big zombie fan, without question it's my favorite sub-genre and I think zombies and comedy have a history of going hand in hand very well so my expectations were quite high going in.

The first thing I noticed was how good some of the writing was. Slightly marred by some oddly crass stuff a lot of the dialogue is surprisingly good, quite deep in fact in a couple of places and I didn't expect that.

The humor? Some stuff really hit the mark and was laugh out loud.

Our leading man, solid.

The zombies, passable.

The execution, better than you'd assume.

Sure it's on a very limited budget but it disguises this well and delivers an oddly enjoyable zombie comedy jaunt.

Rants

Me and the missus always have a show ongoing, something to binge and we've just started The Walking Dead. I was so excited initially when it came out but then bailed at the end of Season 2 as to me it wasn't the zombie epic I expected and simply a soap opera with zombies. I'm hoping I was wrong, I'm hoping this second chance and subsequent 9 seasons beyond what I've seen improve.

Zombies are great, Stalled demonstrates that but as Walking Dead has so far demonstrated they can also be a terrible bore.

Breakdown

Unique setting Great writing Well made Needlessly crass in places.

A janitor (Dan Palmer) gets trapped in a women's restroom and encounters an all-out attack by a horde of zombies.

Clearly the people who made this have talent, had an idea, had a good cast and crew and had a sense of humor. But it just never really took off. There are some scenes that are pretty awesome, but the vast bulk of the time is drawn out (I could not care less about the relationship between WC and the girl in the other stall).

Unfortunately, another issue was the strong British accents. I cannot hold this against them -- or at least I should not -- but many of the talking parts were completely lost on me. These were some thick accents.

A janitor is fixing the fan in the ladies room when people starts to turn. At first, he's a perv peeping on a couple of hot chicks. Then, the girls go zombie and he's hit by a wave of company Christmas party goers turn zombies.

This is a low budget British zombie comedy. The blood and gore hold very little scary moments. I actually like the charm of a low budget horror, but the only scary thing is that oversized stuff rat. As for the comedy part, it had a couple of smile worthy moments. Certainly, there is nothing worthy of a big laugh. The lead character WC is a loser weasel. But Dan Palmer is no Simon Pegg. He doesn't have the likability of Pegg. He's a pale imitation. For a low budget movie, it had its moments. There's just not enough moments to recommend the movie.