Herd

With the 2023 movie "Herd" being a zombie movie, of course I needed no persuasion to sit down and watch it. Had I heard about it prior to watching it? No, not even remotely. But with it being a zombie movie, then I am all game, as I have a knack for anything even remotely zombiesque.

The storyline in "Herd", as written by James Allerdyce and Steven Pierce, was rather slow paced and mundane. It wasn't a particularly thrilling or entertaining foray into the zombie genre. The narrative was rather generic and there wasn't really a whole lot happening throughout the course of the 97 minutes that the movie ran for. And that made sitting through "Herd" somewhat of a struggle and an ordeal.

The acting performances in "Herd" were okay, but nothing outstanding, mind you. There were a couple of familiar faces on the cast list, such as Timothy V. Murphy and Corbin Bernsen.

Visually then "Herd" was okay. Again, nothing outstanding, so you're not in for a grand spectacle of zombie effects, blood, guts and mayhem.

"Herd" came and went without leaving a lasting impression. And it is actually not a movie that I would recommend fans of the zombie genre to rush out and get to watch. It is more of a drama than an actual zombie movie, because the zombie outbreak felt like something that only rummaged around in the background, and there were hardly any zombies in the movie.

My rating of director Steven Pierce's 2023 movie "Herd" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

As other as said, this isn't your "typical zombie film". By that, they mean there are hardly any zombies (better described as "infected") in it.

DEI is so often shoved in our faces, that there's often a Pavlovian eyeroll. I didn't really mind it in this movie. Meh.

Anyway, the acting was so-so. I didn't consider it to be completely amateurish. There really wasn't much in the way of special effects, as there were only a few scenes with the infected.

There was an interesting twist near the end, but I found it odd that the movie didn't bother really delving into it any deeper.

I don't think this deserves a 1, but I kept bouncing between a 4 and a 5. I think it's really a 4.5. I didn't have to pay to watch it, but I'm also not complaining about spending 90 minutes of my time on it, either.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there's nothing relevant to mention about this movie (to deserve such a rating)!

As you read in the description nothing in this script is new. As nothing else really. Each character, each situation, each line is so dramatically déjà vu that someone should warn horror movie lovers about this lost-of-precious-time-trap. At least that's what I'm trying to do future IMDBers who com to take a peak at the comments.

There's so many(/better) options out there that only as a masochist move you'd chose to spend your time like this!

I'm happy and at the same time sad I'm one of the first to tell you to stay off, because I won't be able to get this time back myself.

Just to the same for your fellow man!! :D.

Ahhhh again I got my hopes up,hoping this zombie film would add some much needed life into the genre. Sadly it fell flat.

It's a tale of a couples ups and downs that has the occasional really bad zombie thrown in. A lot like an episode of The Walking Dead but nowhere near as good.

It's just a really bad plot with really bad characters and some really bad acting.

They really could have done something with it all,but decided to play safe and carry on with the script which is just predictable and boring. . I ended up hating it and waiting for it to finish so I could go onto my next film.

Sadly the genre is looking worse by the day if this is what people are going to push out.

Hoping to rebuild their fractured relationship, a woman and her girlfriend head off into the countryside for a weekend retreat, but when they come into contact with a zombie virus that affects one of them must turn to an equally-dangerous militia group for safety against the hordes of undead.

Overall, this was somewhat disappointing if still decent enough effort. The main thing with this one is the rather focused use of the zombies here which is what generates nearly all of the positives here. The backstory for why they're out and about is fine enough for this kind of feature, and when given the behavioral adjustments where they seem fine and not that harmful to others unless they're provoked generates the kind of effective creature here even before getting to their impressive design. The overall look of the creatures with their snarling faces and growing pustules makes for a fun time so that the main attack scenes here are highly effective and enjoyable swarming scenes that are full of solid stunt work where they come after others and generate some grisly effects in the interim. While this is all heavily featured in the first half and last third of the film, that's pretty much the majority of the positives to be had here. There are some issues here that lower this one overall. One of the main drawbacks here is the film's seemingly overwhelming amount of stupidity exhibited by the leads which keep this going along. The whole thing offering of the trip as a means of keeping their relationship intact serves as an excuse to keep the secret about the rapidly-spreading infection from her girlfriend away from others due to some narrow-minded commitment to the relationship instead of thinking about the safety of the group around her for no real reason. This is exacerbated by the wholly uninvolved series of bits beforehand where they seem perfectly aware of everything at the start but their strange fascination with the relationship instead puts them into the fray so that they become infected when around others. This causes a wholly unlikable situation to occur here with the leads being very unlikable and not at all that fun to follow throughout here. The other issue here is the film's wholly reliant ability to utilize some of the most egregious and overdone tropes in the genre as a means of trying to tell a story that isn't all that impressive. The characters being part of the gay community is really the only interesting fact of the film, but it's all wiped away by the increasingly unnatural use of the characters going more for a fear-of-man situation that gets played out quite quickly since it's a feature of every zombie effort. Using the idea of man as the more fearsome enemy in the face of zombies invading is tired, cliched, and really grinds the film to a halt with the use of these features which have very little zombie action in favor of draining dialogue scenes reinforcing these factors. That ends up causing the film to be quite disappointingly absent of zombie features at the expense of irritating characters and genre tropes, so it's got some big factors holding it back.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.