Before Dawn

Before Dawn is about an estranged couple who go on a vacation to save their troubled relationship, but things goes awry when they find themselves under attack from the walking dead. The first half of this film is literally all mama/papa drama. I kept pulling up the movie on IMDb to make sure it was a horror movie and not a drama. After about 35 minutes of boring relationship drama, we see out first zombie. Once the scene with the zombie is over, it's back to more drama. The last 20 or so minutes of the film start to get a little interesting, but not enough to make up for the hour of boringness! Before Dawn is not really a horror at all, it's a full-blown drama with a couple zombies thrown in for substance. I think if you watched it going in, knowing that it was a drama and not expecting a horror, and then it would probably be pretty good. But since I only watch horror, I found it to be boring. Although the ending was kinda cool and the zombies were the spaz-iest zombies I've ever seen, still not enough to give this movie anything higher than a 4.

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This wasn't really that much of a zombie film until the ending. But taken as a whole it reminded me a lot of Black Summer the series which I really like, it just the last few minutes. That surge at the end saves it from a 2 rating and raises it to a 4/10.

Someone urged me to watch this movie because they had seen it at a festiival a few years ago, but I couldn't find it anywhere, luckily a stream into UKs Horror Channel provided through Film On allowed me to see this.

The guy that makes the movie is the same guy who made a Bait which I really enjoyed, but this is a whole different ballgame. For some unknown reason the cast were not recorded (sound) at the time of shooting, yes they say the lines but clearly no sound guy was tasked with recording actual audio. Therefore all that is done post filming, I believe they call it adr. This was awful there is no background sounds, everything deathly quiet. Worse still the performances because of the soap opera style approach to horror feel removed. Don't get me wrong performances are good, the film is quite good because it's a thinking zombie movie, it's different. But this whole sound issue, it does not allow you to fully engage in the film. You just simply don't feel that level of attachment. Because I could not get into the zone, the film simply does not work for me on any level.

It's amazing how many zombie films there are out there . If nothing else it keeps The Horror Channel in the UK constantly running . I'm trying to remember a time when post apocalypse scenarios didn't feature zombies . When I was a teenager nuclear annihilation seemed the major plot device to set up the end of the world . As soon as Gorby pulled down The Iron Curtain 20 billion zombies staggered out to take over the world

As you can guess the point I'm making is that there's an element of seen it all before and that's probably why Boyle's 28DL was such a big hit - he brought something new to the table by having the living dead outsprint Usain Bolt . One can understand the point BEFORE DAWN is trying for . It's a bit like Ben Wheatley's KILL LIST where British social drama meets unrestrained horror but ends up being a bit seen it all before where the protagonists lock themselves in a farmhouse . If nothing else it's no worse than WORLD WAR Z and cost 150 million dollars less to produce and does contain a deeply cynical line

" What are the police doing ? "

" Oh it's the end of the world let's phone the f---in pigs "

which caused me to stifle a laugh but there's not much of a film here

There is some meat to the domestic drama of this film. When the zombie part starts, the shifts pulls for emotions in an interesting fashion. That being said, the film then follows ideas that have been done previously. Well acted with some decent directing, I enjoyed this experience.