Severed

28 Days later in the woods, or in Canada. Good location and interesting lumbering footage at first, then the main character and some of the zombies act rather stupidly, then everything starts to sort of seem like the same scene over and over and you aren't even half way to the end of it all.

Characters are happy to find a truck, try to leave, can't, then go back to call on the radio for help.

Then they find another truck easily even though the first truck was supposed to be the only one. It's stuff like this, the movie perpetuates rather than develops, no one takes any logical approach to trying to save themselves.

Then the whole things grinds to a halt in the middle and suddenly they meet a bunch of new characters so we can have people sit around and talk and talk and wait and wait and wait.

Extremely grainy looking, the highlights on actors faces crawl with grain. Actors are okay, zombies seem very very hungry but the attack scenes all look like someone watched Saving Private Ryan too many times, which is easy to do I suppose.

Zombie fans will know all the rip off moments in this film, none are homages this just doesn't have much to offer after the novelty of the location runs out. Also slowing things down are several, we are so sad we just hacked a zombie to death for 2 minute type of scenes. Great drama this is not, please stop stopping to try to make us feel their pain at killing zombies? Canadian tax shelter dollars again at work, like the old days, result is pretty dam dull. Movie seems really long finally grinds to a halt right at the magic number 93 minutes. One of those shortest lengths a movie can be to be sold as a feature. It's a long ass 93 minutes.

I have seen worse in my time, what initially got my attention on this one was on the back of the DVD, it said the special effects were created by the same studio that did the Final Destination FX so I thought at least I would get decent gore fx, well I was disappointed that most of the bloody fx were just a lot of chunky spraying blood in the face kind of stuff, almost all the zombie biting scenes were just them clamping down on odd sections of the body with just a little blood around the mouth, you never actually see them pull off pieces of flesh, there were maybe two shots of the zombies feasting on a body, those ones were okay but the shaky camera made it difficult to see much detail, the overall film isn't bad and it kept me interested and not bored, however it is a "zombie flick" it just lacked in the gore score.

This film surprisingly has many good young actors in it. The character development however is awful, and one is left feeling that you just don't "feel" for any of the characters. Decent production is wasted by poor dialogue , and unusually melodramatic lines.I don't mind watching a film that isn't firing on all cylinders, this one doesn't spark most of them. I must admit that I am a fan of Argento, Romero and Fulci and I expected more from this attempt at a zombie film.The formula isn't hard, give us decent acting, lots of tension,of course good effects and you're halfway here.I truly believe that most U.S. horror is being shot for the "MTV generation." At least I feel comfortable knowing that we still have some good editors, and sound production left.The camera work is the very frenetic and hand held stuff that we have been fed lately...please rent a Stedicam! At least.

Bahumbug. After the initial set-up I was thinking that it looked liked it was going to be competent and hopefully amusing low-budget Indie horror effort. My perception changed when the jerky, in-your-face camera work came to the party. Why do that! There's better ways to get the adrenaline pumping. It was like the person behind the camera was having a mental fit, and it did become aggravating and hard to make-out what was happening. And the story just couldn't escape its formulaic staples and messy structure, despite a surprisingly effective conclusion that I didn't see coming. Still I was left unsatisfied. To bad that it sets up one vanilla flavoured, over-used cliché after another and then it drags on. Then when you thought it couldn't get anymore the same, they chuck in another sub-plot that is just as worthless and poorly drawn up. Even the clunky script leaves a lot to be desired about the token characters and their rash reactions. Pretty much the premise goes onto steal ideas from other horror movies. It wants to be serious, but the over-the-top nature of its erratic mayhem and many unintentionally laughable sequences destroy that aspect. The film has a slick look with beautiful location choices, and Carl Bessai's tight direction is dry, but it's undone by the overall execution where it succumbs to repetition and static build-ups. It seemed to want to rely on some extreme blood splashing about, and having everything move so fast. But the shocks are weak, and the suspense is never there. I thought there were some fine-tuned performances amongst the slack-jaw ones though. Nothing great, but adequate. The music surprised because it was one of the few things that clicked with its eerie chimes in a nicely arranged harmonious score.

Please disregard most of the negative reviews here. I'm a 35 year-old horror fan, so I've been around the block and back. I LOVE horror and zombie movies... I love Romero, but also understand that Romero isn't the be all and end all (in fact watch "Last Man on Earth" and then try telling me that "Night of the Living Dead" is original ;) ).

Severed is a GREAT film - the ending is unfortunately rushed, probably due to budget, but PLEASE watch this film and enjoy it for what it is... fun, frantic and suspenseful.

The teens dissing this movie probably reckoned there weren't enough sh!t Saw-style death scenes.

Well done, filmmakers... I'll be looking out for your other efforts.