Chrysalis

I really enjoyed this film, I was pleasantly surprised.

If you are after gratuitous gore, and amazing special effects, then maybe it's not for you.

The acting is fairly solid, with a few cringe worthy moments, but over all pretty convincing. It's a horror flick done right, I was heavily invested in the characters, and felt anxious when they were faced with dangers.

This is by far one of the better low budget, apocalyptic films made in recent times, beautifully shot, brooding score, and likable characters.

If you liked films like The Road, or Stake land, I think you will enjoy this.

UK title - The Living Dead. When my friend lent me this on dvd he did warn me that it was slow & boring. And he wasn't lying! Three survivors of a zombie style apocalypse are holed up in a large, abandoned building. Zero marks for originality. This film focuses more on the relationships & interactions of the three rather than the infected, so is as much a drama as it is horror. Your typical zombie fan will feel somewhat short changed. Acting, production values etc are OK. A short sex scene does liven it up briefly, nice hooters! Overall though, it's a bore and offers nothing new to a sub genre that's been done to death.

This is a very slow-moving, character-based post-apocalypse horror. The pacing isn't as big a problem for me as the sound levels. The dialogue in the first half of this film is frequently inaudible buried, as it is, under the atmospheric mood music - the second half is fine and infinitely more enjoyable.

The direction, locations and acting from the small cast is impossible to fault. When incidents do occur, they are well staged and brutal - they are just very few and far between.

'The Living Dead' won't be for everyone - even less will stick with it due to the early sound issues, and that's a real shame. My score is 7 out of 10.

Here's the simple acid test to determine whether you have created a viable work of fiction or not. At the end have you told a story or have you mainly filmed people running around a warehouse? In the case of Chrysalis it's very much the latter.

The monsters don't look great and don't really do a lot either. There are some OK scenes if all you want is to see people running away from zombies through a warehouse. Myself, I would like a bit of story with that. Or even just some action. Also why the long scenes about a characters inability to read? It's not character development if it doesn't develop into anything. Or get referenced again throughout the whole movie. I was waiting for the scene where she was stood with a jar of penicillin and a jar of rat poison trying to read the labels or something.

All the actors involved are bad but the girl is so stilted and wooden that it gets annoying to listen to her. At the end of the movie no story has been told. This is basically what I would expect from a movie cobbled together by amateurs with kickstarter money. Don't waste your time and don't be fooled by the ridiculous fake reviews either.

I really wanted this movie to redeem itself but it became increasingly worst as it went on. Here are the weak points. The plot is poor and predictable, the acting is substandard and the score is just god awful. It is probably the only one zombie movie where I found myself cheering for the zombies. I kept asking myself "how the hell did you lot survive this long?" Eventually, I realised that I was the biggest loser in all this as I had lost 100 minutes of my life that I could never regain. It may have been a very good 6th form project, but it really should never hit the big screen. My tip is to only watch this movie when you are high, at least then you can blame it on the weed.