Severed

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.

Another zombie movie with a different twist, tree huggers and lumber jacks join forces protect themselves from the undead and the corporation that put them in the line of fire. The CEO of a lumber company sends his son to check on a camp that mysteriously stopped sending wood out of the deep forest. Tyler is sent out by his father to a lumber camp that is too quiet. Tyler falls upon zombies and some survivors and they try to escape the area while avoiding the bite, and killing zombies. The company then discovers that the zombies were caused by their own experiments to induce faster tree growth. The only question is, who will survive? Camera work much like 28 days later, jerky and too close in during the action scenes. Zombies are a cross between 28 days later and night of the living dead, slow but loud and growly. Many of the cast are solid character actors who help make the movie more palatable. If you don't like zombies, skip this. Otherwise it is worth the time.

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.

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.

Take George A. Romero's immortal horror classic "Day of the Dead"; simply replace the brainless macho military men with brainless macho woodchoppers and, ta-da, you've got "Severed". Oh, and the zombie-virus here is inflicted by genetically altered trees that got injected with a growth serum that clearly doesn't function very well. This is a watchable new horror movie with tons of splatter and a handful of effective filming locations, but it's still miles away from being any good. "Severed" completely lacks originality and tension, and I wonder if writer/director Carl Bessai deliberately endeavored to insert every possible cliché of the genre! Any cliché, you name it and "Severed" has it! From the cowardly scientist over the boisterous team-leader with a heart of gold onto the completely implausible romance sub plot, it's all there! Tyler, the son of a forestry company tycoon, is reluctantly sent to a remote testing area to find out why the tree-cutting business has stopped there. Shortly after his arrival there, he vividly discovers that the company's brand new & unethical invention to make trees grow faster turned the majority of lumberjacks into drooling zombies. Before he properly realizes it, the area is hermetically sealed of with Tyler, the remaining cutters and a handful of tree-huggers still in it. There are hundreds of zombie movies out there, and "Severed" simply isn't very memorable. It gets tedious very quick and just when you think the movie is almost over, director Bessai suddenly comes up with a whole new plot about another community of survivors that spend their days aiming guns at the zombies. The amount of gore and bloodshed is satisfying, though. Since we're dealing with lumberjacks here, the undead opponents are attacked with chainsaws, large industrial band saws and, of course, axes. For some reason, the camera makes wild spastic moves whenever there's a massacre going on and, as to be expected, there are no real shock-moments throughout the entire film. The ending is just stupid, everyone around here seems to agree on that, and the majority of the cast-members shouldn't anticipate successful acting careers. "Severed" is a weak film, but enthusiast fans of nowadays horror-smut might consider it worth the price of a rental.