La nuit a dévoré le monde

A man gets caught in an apartment as the zombie apocalypse kicks off. He is safe, but alone.

Now I would start of by saying this is very well made. The production, camera work and acting is all great. I quite like it when films shrink down the scope to a few rooms. I like everything about this film, except having to sit through it.

The underlying themes of this film is companionship and boredom. The film demonstrates this very well. But in doing so makes for a very lonely, boring film.

Watching a man slowly lose his mind from loneliness is not particularity engaging.

There is no survival aspect, no action.

This is a very quiet, considered, hipster film. There is nothing wrong with that and I am glad the people who enjoyed it, enjoyed it. I can see why they did, but this is not the experience I want when I put a zombie movie on.

I just finished this. I very much enjoyed it. The undead in this are some of the creepiest in the genre because of their utter silence. The character of Sam really drew me in. You feel very much for him and he manages to portray just about every human emotion there is extremely well while finding ways to survive alone in the desert of death, horror and loss around him. This survival is not just about food and ravenous flesh-eating zombies. There are some small and brilliant experimental music scenes created when Sam finds ingenious ways to relieve his boredom and loneliness. He's obviously a musician . He plays drums amazingly too. There is a twist in there too. I don't want to give anything away except to say I didn't see it coming at all. There were many sad scenes. Some achingly sad. And a few humorous ones. Overall, this is an unexpected gem. Kudos!

I love a good, deep movie filled with symbolism and thought provoking scenes. But when it comes to horror flicks, I want to leave my intellect behind and just simply get creeped out. This is an unusual zombie movie. It is not scary, or even creepy. This movie is more about survival and loneliness than battling the undead.

Enter Sam. He goes to his former girlfriend's apartment to pick up his things. After some awkward conversation amidst some overly loud music and a crowd of party guests, his former girlfriend sends him down the hall to the office for his things. You can feel Sam's uneasiness with the people and the noise. Avoiding the loud crowd, he sits in the office and finally falls asleep. When he wakes up, the world, as he knows it is gone, replaced by flesh-eating zombies. We never know how or why.

This is the story of his survival, alone, isolated and trapped, in an apartment building in Paris. The first part of the movie was interesting as he searches the building, marking off apartments that harbor undead residents. Going into the various apartments, he begins gathering food in tote bags like a doomsday shopping trip.

What's missing here? A couple of things. We don't know Sam, and very little happens in the movie to really clue us in as to who he is, and what makes him tick. We get glimpses but nothing concrete to make us care about him and hope for his survival.

The second thing missing is zombie interaction. This is less of a horror movie and more of a psychological study on being isolated and alone, and the effect it has on one's mind. If you're looking for a movie that makes you think, with a side of zombies, this might do the trick. There is definitely a lot to think about here.

The poster and description don't really sell this movie correctly. They sort of hint at this bloodbath zombie world. And while there are hints of that, it is much more of a slice of life drama and psychological study if anything.

There are obviously zombies but not they are not the main focus. There are hints of The Omega Man in here but I think it's much more thoughtful, it tries to look at what life would actually be like.

The film is slow and there are like 40 lines of dialogue in the whole movie, it might even be less. This doesn't make it bad or anything but it does make some parts drag ever so slightly.

For starters, the zombies are totally, utterly mute. Believe or not, it's quite scary! In the real world, a simple cough would get anybody killed in an instant... More generally, one of the most powerful features of this movie is the strength of the overwhelming silence: in the streets, buildings, cars, rooms, hallways... Gone is the human agitation we have grown so used to!

Then, the setting in beautiful Paris, downtown-style. Lots of nice Haustmanian buildings. This comes in sharp contrast to the horror that awaits our character at virtually every corner.

The story fits on a simple sheet of paper, but the interest of this movie lies elsewhere. As some reviewers have described it before, it's about survival of the worst kind. I found myself planning what actions the "hero" should be taking to survive, ahead of him and, ticked, he went through each of them! In this regard, it is a pretty consistent movie which feels quite real.

My biggest complain is about the ending, something that a lot of French movies typically fail to do properly (just like the Americans and Asians, but for some other reasons): there is absolutely no closure to the storyline, far from it. I won't get into the details here, but please be warned that you will be left with a virtually limitless number of possible endings for this movie, way too many in my opinion to feel comfortable with it.