Severed

In a remote Canadian forest, a group of protesters raise a manifestation against the deforesting. When one worker uses his chainsaw to saw a large tree, its sap drops on his body and he immediately becomes a zombie. When the senior management of the company does not receive any information about the production, the owner and chairman sends his son Tyler (Paul Campbell) to the location to investigate what is happening. Tyler sees both the protester's camp and the sawmill completely abandoned and sooner he finds that the area is surrounded by zombies. He meets a group of survivors leaded by the foreman Mac (Paul Campbell), the protester Rita (Sarah Lind) and the coward biologist Carter (JR Bourne), and Carter explains that he was ahead of a genetic project to increase and improve the production of trees in the area, and the experiment unexpectedly had gone wrong transforming human beings into flesh-eater zombies. Their fight for survival begins.

"Severed" is an entertaining zombie movie, with an original and good beginning. The lead characters are well developed along the story, and with exception of Mac and Tyler, the others are basically scum. The plot point is the revelation of Rita that she had spiked the tree, but the movie becomes dull and boring when the survivors meet Anderson's team. The open conclusion is also very frustrating; maybe the intention of the writer is to give a hook for an unnecessary sequel, but it dos not work. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Infectados" ("Infected")

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.

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.