Dead Shadows

A comet heads over Paris that starts a chain of events that involves humans morphing into zombies then into Starship Trooper type bugs.

This is a French film that has been dubbed in English and you know right away because they must use the same three voice actors that do all the English dubs. The film doesn't get into what is really happening or any kind of a plot. They just concentrate on these things getting shot or beat to death and that's the film. The effects were good like a lot of melting, bubbling faces and tentacles growing out of bodies. Other than that the whole thing is just blah. There was potential there but they didn't do anything with it.

At firsts I had no expectations for this movie. I really thought it was going to be another low budget B-Movie. You know, the usual bad acting mostly attributed to very poor directing. To my surprise this was certainly not the case. The plot on the other hand was a lot better than most Horror/Sci-Fi movies. It was simple and somewhat silly, but at least it was not complex and full of a bunch of impossible scenarios. I would recommend this movie for any who likes laid back and not too graphic movies in this genre. Especially on a stay at home date night. Fabian Wolfrom made this film significantly better than it actually is. This is the first time I have ever seen this actor and he has made a lasting impression on me.

Over the past couple of years we've come to expect mainly gory survival horror from France - and while I do love some of them (Haute Tension, Vertige etc) some have just been horrible (Martyrs) so I was pleasantly surprised when Dead Shadows turned out to be something very different.

Dead Shadows takes a lot of inspiration from 80s horror movies and has a Lovecraftian vibe to it. Horror movies these days tend to have a lot of pacing issues but I didn't find myself bored at any point during the movie. If you're looking for something entertaining that's not the standard gore-fest but still has lots of aliens, tentacles and action in it, I strongly recommend you check this out.

Screened at Dead By Dawn Festival.

Regarding an alien invasion of France, this film is utterly dire. It has a wimpish protagonist who every chick in the film seems to have the hots for and every female character in it is either shallow, vapid or both. It gives no real explanation or backstory, but simply belts along, yet manages to be utterly devoid of tension or suspense and has stupid plot holes. Even at 70 odd minutes it still feels too long and is basically a sequence of weird occurrences and mediocre fight scenes. Also, the CGI sucks.

I don't even really have the heart to go into any more detail except to say that it's a total turkey and didn't go down well at all with the audience at the Edinburgh Dead by Dawn festival where I caught it.

2/10, a boring annoying film that doesn't seem to have a clue about what it actually wishes to say and a film to be avoided. Truly dreadful.

Okay so the story does start off interesting enough (Cowardly kid with a crazy past) and the premise is actually quite interesting as well as the story (not quite "Zombies" but something else) The problem is that they didn't use the budget well enough. Sure the effects are pretty good but there's occasionally some bad camera styling (it's enough to be noticeable) and the music and sound effects are very much below average. It's a shame who they got for the lead role because you can clearly see his lack experience, yet his fellow actors actually do quite a decent job. It does get a lot more interesting near the end of the movie but it doesn't give itself enough time to explore the possibilities well enough.

So in conclusion: If you enjoy cheesy zombie movies/ Creature movies then you may like this. If you don't mind the low-budget feeling horror flicks then you may enjoy it. If you're someone that only enjoys top-end effects and amazing acting then I don't recommend this movie for you.

It's a lot better than some of the horror-zombie-creature flicks as of late but it isn't genre defining, nor is it anything new. I gave it a slightly above average score solely for it trying to do something different. It may not have succeeded in doing something different but at least they tried and that's more than can be said for most movies these days.