Ben & Mickey vs. the Dead

As those enticed by the sport of baseball will know well, a "battery" is the two person team of the pitcher and catcher, also known as batterymen or batterymates and so to is the source of the relationship between Ben and Mickey, two wandering souls in a world consumed by the zombie apocalypse. But the title of this immensely intriguing low budget project shares a duel meaning as Mickey's collection of batteries he keeps in his travel pack holds the power of denial, allowing his Discman and a bundle of CD's to shut out the world. All his companion keeps a checklist of the number of undead he offs with his bat or revolver. This is but one of the intriguing dynamics present in The Battery, a very deliberately paced but ultimately very satisfying approach to the genre.

In all honesty calling The Battery a zombie film at all would be a misnomer as this time around the stumbling monsters are relegated to bloody window dressing with the film instead focussing on the relationship (and unlikely bond) these two very different people share. Ben is brash, aggressive, unnecessarily assertive and very frank, whereas Mickey is a meek romantic, the type who upon hearing a woman's voice over a walkie talkie immediately dreams of the potential for some sort of a far fetched relationship. Despite appearances, these two need one another – Ben relying on Mickey to keep him sane and Mickey on his caveman like partner to protect him and ultimately keep him in the moment.

I know for a fact however that there will be people who despise The Battery, and not because of the genre to which it belongs. This is a very slowly paced film and also one that fills a good portion of its running time with no dialogue scenes of the two traversing the sun soaked New England countryside. Other extended sequences simply fixate on Mickey listening to his music, often playing entire songs without anything else but a static shot of the actor's face. "Maddening" (and certainly "boring") will be used by some but for me, despite some similar issues, The Battery had a transfixing quality and a strong, emotionally satisfying payoff.

The pitfalls of any micro budget ($6,000) flick remain, from having to skimp on makeup effects (which is still quite respectable actually) gore, the best props, ability to shoot scenes multiple times, etc all remain and with first time director-writer-star Jeremy Gardner at the helm, hiccups were to be expected. He and co-star Adam Cronheim's acting chops dip from time to time though they do better than most considering the circumstances. What I enjoyed most about Gardner's script was its blunt depiction of the way two twenty-something dudes would talk, swinging between simply silence and to-the-point sarcastic banter. This is a shoot the **** writing style and it works more often than not.

As the finale rolls around we find our leads trapped in their car, without keys and a horde of the undead surrounding them and rocking the vehicle without fatigue. It starts out very comedically but slowly loses that quality and becomes quite maddening, a feeling or protagonists certainly share. The very final (unbroken) shot was reportedly 17 minutes long originally but was then cut to 11. It's a fantastic and effective ploy but one I think would have been even more searing if it hadn't been preceded by so many other long takes. The third act as a whole is melancholy in its construction but also rousing and triumphant in a way and also offers a neat spin on the oft seen refuge camp, a la The Governor's Woodbury in The Walking Dead.

In fact in spite of its budget The Battery employs a number of interesting approaches to the genre (if not every completely fleshed out) such as how to baptize the uninitiated into the art of zombie killing, how one might satisfy their "needs" in the situation and simply how two guys might actually react to the situation and where they (or at least one of them) might feel safe to sleep at night. Blended with the indie soundtrack (one that never goes into quirky hipster territory) strong editing and its unwavering approach and style, The Battery is a singularly unique take on the zombie phenomenon and one that is nothing close to something I would recommend to everyone.

Ben (the director, Jeremy Gardner) & Mickey (Adam Cronheim) are two ex pro baseball players who are eking out an existence while wandering a zombie infested America. Ben is nomadic and doesn't like staying in one place for too long, while Mickey longs for settlement. Mickey hides himself away from the zombie apocalypse via solace in his headphones which he almost permanently wears, while Ben is more the hunter gatherer type, more concerned with survival. On they wander, smoking, fishing, playing catch and generally getting on each others nerves, as when one has survived a zombie apocalypse, one unfortunately doesn't get to choose one's traveling companion.

And that's pretty much it in terms of plot as The Battery is more of a quirky, offbeat character driven road film than an outright zombie film, with the zombies themselves only very occasionally making an appearance. However, while being flawed, The Battery is at heart a pretty decent film, with great and believable chemistry between our two squabbling protagonists, and while shot on a minuscule paltry budget of a mere $6,000 it's a beautiful looking film and easily transcends its shoestring budget via its wholly believable performances. It's also gut bustingly funny in parts with great dialogue and one unutterably wrong but absolutely hilarious scene that had me on the floor.

It's not a film without its flaws though, with some scenes going on far too long, which kinda annoyed me and I really think it could've benefited with some leaner editing. However, for a debut film shot with such ultra limited resources, it's overall a minor quibble as ultimately The Battery is a winner, so horror fans should give it a chance as it's an ambitious and satisfying film with a ton of heart. Awesome soundtrack too.

Ben (Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) survived the zombie apocalypse with a little luck and lots of patience inside a house surrounded by the undead. Now they travel around in the country with a simple strategy to survive: keep moving, so they can't catch us, and stay away from the towns and cities where most of them are lurking.

You might divide Zombie movies into 3 types: stage 1, when zombies only occur on remote islands, while the rest of the world doesn't notice ('White Zombie', 'I Walked With A Zombie', or Lucio Fulci's 'Zombi 2'). Stage 2, when a city is overrun, but with the aid of military forces, mankind may still emerge victorious ('Return of the Living Dead', Lenzi's 'Nightmare City'). Stage 3, when the zombies won and only few survivors are hiding or running ('Day of the Dead', 'Resident Evil: Extinction'). The problem is, too many 'stage 3' movies have been shot in recent years, including the TV series 'The Walking Dead' which took the commercial potential to a whole new level. So, if you pushed apocalypse to the top already, where can you go from there? 'The Battery' aka 'Ben & Mickey vs. the Dead' recognized you cannot push destruction and violence any further, so it takes apocalypse from a huge scale down to a small personal level. Ben and Mickey don't massacre the undead. They just try to stay out of the way and live a life with small pleasures. They'll be happy to find a toothbrush, clean socks, batteries for the CD player or a bottle of booze. The lack of heroic ambition and the wish to avoid fights leads to a lazy life (with the risk of an early demise, nonetheless). If viewers describe the movie as boring, slow or uneventful, that's because the two main characters love to live as uneventful as possible. The orchard, where nobody could pick up the apples because they are all dead, is a quiet and ultimately disturbing symbol for the decay of the world – you don't need to show a burning city for the same statement. The movie is kind of unique in its modesty - and very tongue-in-cheek, too. In my opinion, it deserves to be watched because it takes a different approach to the zombie genre, which is hard to achieve in a genre that accumulated so much attention of movie makers in recent years.

Sweet baby Jesus in a handbasket, you may just die of boredom before this movie ends. Painfully bad... still watched to the end, it IS a zombie movie but that's where its positives begin and end.

In fact, this just may be the first zombie movie I've ever deleted. This film takes everything that could possibly be crap about a movie and stuffs it into an interminably long focus on a catcher stuck in the friendzone as his pitcher mate hankers after anything with breasts.... notable scenes include pitcher masturbating in car as zombie girl crushes bloodied knockers against the window. A game of catch. Rolling Landscapes. A game of catch. Rolling forest. A game of catch. Rolling landscape. A quick game of catch followed by a quarter hour study of the interior headlining of a Volvo. Exciting stuff. Oh dear.... never again.

I saw this film at the Imagine film festival 2013 in Amsterdam. The festival website labeled it as Horror, but the IMDb website rightly adds the Drama label as well, the latter better describing the essence of the story. There is no real plot, other than the zombie plague that apparently is spreading. We are left in the dark how and why this came about. The number of zombies in sight is kept to a minimum, being not really important for the story, only needed as entourage creating the circumstances in which the two men have to survive. The few humans they encounter on their journey are hostile on average, only trying to survive like our two main characters. Meanwhile they talk about lost relatives, family members, and (of course) former girl friends whose fate is uncertain.

We see two very different characters, formerly working together as a so-called Battery (a catcher and pitcher couple in baseball), roaming from place to place, eating canned food, using empty houses for shelter when available (after being checked for zombies, and swept clear of it when needed), but otherwise having nothing useful to do other than practicing and quibbling. Their interaction is the real subject of this film, and keeps us interested for the whole 101 minutes running time. The secret ingredient is the humor that is interwoven throughout, and their differences in coping behavior.

The long final scene in the confines of a car is unique. From the Q&A after the screening we learned that it was even 17 minutes long originally, later cut down to 11 minutes, but still stretching the patience of contemporary viewers. But it worked: wondering how this would come to an end (and which end?) kept us alive and prevented a walk out. Unique for the film as a whole is that it adds humanity to the zombie category (a takeaway quote from the Q&A). It shows that it is not always needed to have an abundance of blood&gore in a horror movie to keep us interested. Apparently, this story works as a vehicle to let us think about what might happen when our way-of-life is turned upside-down. How will I cope in such circumstances??

Of course, the post-apocalypse situation always gives rise to questions: where to find petrol (out of stranded cars??), bullets (how to obtain??), and batteries. They burn a lot of the latter, e.g. the walkie-talkies took 4 each, and the continuous use of a discman is utterly irresponsible. But all of that may be wrong questions to ask, especially in this movie that tries to be different and succeeds very well in that, so we really should not be bickering about such tiny details.

All in all, I was very satisfied to put this film on my "must see" list, regardless of the synopsis not sounding that much interesting. But it worked out very well for me, after all, as can be derived from above paragraphs. I scored a maximum (excellent) for the audience award when leaving the theater. As of today, this film ended second (score 8.43) on the audience award listing, so I'm not alone in this.