I Survived a Zombie Holocaust

If you're looking for a solid horrific Zombie story-line then you'll be disappointed. This movie is about mixing comedy, romance and some funny horror into your movie night. The story is built on funny quips portrayed in scenes. The story-line on the other hand is simple. A nerd guy who is happy because he just landed a "perfect job" with an upcoming horror feature and just found the girl of his dreams when things start to get worse, and the worst is when all the film extra's become zombies and he finds himself in a battle for his and his dream-girl's life.

The film is very amiable. Especially with the fun nerdy, baby-faced and insecure Wesley Pennington (Harley Neville) yet some scenes you feel that the scenes are longer than they should be and some jokes are really being pushed. I believe it should be better if the movie was shorter to avoid these points, yet, the makers might take a note of that for their next feature.

All-in-all it was a fun experience watching a movie from New-Zealnd, where you rarely see movie breakouts from, and I believe it's a good movie to watch with your buddies on a weekend night when you need to give your stressful brain a break from all the stress of the week and the pressure of the bad news you say on a daily basis in media and have some pure horror-styled fun as your stress-relief weekend night.

I would have loved to have enjoyed this and had been able to support local cinema, but alas this was quite painful to watch... in fact I couldn't even make it past 45 minutes. The production itself was ~okay~ but the script, toilet humour and needless over sexualisation of women made it impossible for me to enjoy. I can only hope the next film these guys put out will be a bit better thought out.

Many movies have tried to mix a zombie movie with comedy but this is the only one that really could make me laugh

Plot

A young runner, on a Zombie film set, has the first day from hell when real Zombies overrun the set.

Cast

Not familiar with anyone involved

Verdict

So the premise is that during the filming of a zombie movie real zombies attack, does that sound familiar to you? If it doesn't you can't watch many zombie films because I can think of 4-5 flicks with exactly the same concept! 2017's One Cut of the Dead arguably being the best of the bunch. So originality? Not so much on view here.

Visually it looks the part and the cast are competent enough, the trouble is that though this is a zombie comedy it's light on zombies and erm....laughs. You know what it does have? Cliches, tropes and all the standard scenes you expect from a mediocre zombie film.

I was enjoying it initially, alas this didn't last and it fell back on every cliche imaginable and left me querying whether I'd already seen it because it felt so remarkably recycled.

I see what they were trying to do here, but they relied too much on what had come before rather than carving the movie its own identity. The end result, something you've practically seen before.

Rants

Horror is my default genre and within that zombie films are my favourite sub-genre so as you can imagine I've seen far too many and that is really starting to cost me. I feel like I've seen everything, that every zombie movie I watch I fail to enjoy because I've seen too much before and everything feels like a remake of what's come before. I need and appreciate originality more than ever but this sub-genre is stale and you simply don't see enough of it!

The Good

Some decent ideas Fairly well made

The Bad

Very little originality Falls apart the further in it goes.

It's a great core premise: troubled zombie flick's shoot gets overrun with real zombies. It could have been gold, sadly it wasn't.

The cast try. The crew do what they can with what's clearly a very limited budget. It's obvious that a lot of local goodwill went in, too. There are some scenes where it's pretty clear that most of the local town turned up and gave it their best shot - look at the rugby game sidelines for what I mean.

The trouble with the movie is what isn't there. The lead actor is simply not compelling enough to identify with, even after it's clear that he needs to become a badass if he's going to survive. The comedy feels like it's actors working lines from tight scripts and there's no vibe to it at all. In an area with some of the most compelling scenery and natural light on earth, the whole thing is shot in a generic forest under flat light (honestly, it looks like it was filmed under clouded skies at mid day). The cinematography is fixed cameras at a polite distance with plenty of unused space in most of the shots. The worst is the direction. This movie is staid, bloated, and terribly, terribly slow.

It's slow like a glacier is slow. Really.

There'll be the inevitable comparisons to homegrown classics like Bad Taste or Braindead. Nope. This isn't anywhere near those movies, at any level, and if you want to see what can be done on a tight budget then look those movies up. I've given a few stars for the sake of the support leads (especially Jocelyn Christian, who deserves better), but that's it.

See it if and only if you are making a movie and need to research mistakes to avoid.