The Battery

The thought of yet another low-budget zombie movie filled me with dread, but I was hearing good word of mouth about Jeremy Gardner's $6000 zombie pic THE BATTERY, so I gave it a whirl at Amsterdam's Imagine film festival. And am very glad I did, as it turned out to be probably my favourite film of the all the ones I saw there.

It's a (nearly) 2-hander about two guys crossing rural New England and, very occasionally, fighting off zombies. The title is a baseball term referring to the partnership between the pitcher and the catcher. Or something - forgive if if I've got that wrong; I don't know much about baseball, but it doesn't matter anyway.

And that's pretty much all you need to know about the plot.

Like the best zombie films, it's more about the living than the dead. This is a double-pronged character/relationship study (which thankfully never degenerates into the bad soap of The Walking Dead) rather than an action movie and there isn't an awful lot of gore, so younger viewers with ADD might get fidgety. But anyone who enjoys a well-crafted screenplay and nicely-drawn characters will have a blast. The climax, which makes a virtue out of the film's low budget, is particularly ingenious.

There are no wobblicam, jitterbug editing, CCTV, found footage, flashy camera effects or modish colour grading. Just a brace of good performances against a backdrop of leafy green countryside in broad daylight, beautifully edited & classically filmed so that (and this is a novelty these days) you can actually SEE what's going on.

Also has an excellent soundtrack.

I love film and I love it even more when it sneaks up and surprises me with something completely unpredictable and original. Jeremy Gardner's The Battery, made for only $6,000 and released on video-on-demand outlets as of June 4, 2013, is one of the most surprising endeavors I've stumbled upon in months. It's a free-spirited, "anti-zombie zombie movie," combining wonderfully played dialog, palpable circumstances, and enough wit and soul to liven an entire franchise of movies. If this is the future of independent horror, I got some serious renting to do.

Gardner, who directed, wrote, and produced the film, stars as Ben, traveling down the back-roads of Connecticut with Mickey (Adam Cronheim), both of whom were once ballplayers. Their polar-opposite personalities and resistance of closeness and bonding tells us they weren't the two sitting next to each other at the bar when they celebrated a win. Ben and Mickey are traveling the back-roads in an attempt to flee the zombie apocalypse and find adequate shelter.

I'll interrupt myself by saying that I use the phrase "zombie apocalypse" loosely; very loosely. Gardner is smart to shove the undead to the background, while the relationship and humanity of Ben and Mickey proudly takes the foreground here. While both men may not be the best of friends, neither would've gotten far without the help of each other. Mickey is petrified of "zombies" (I put the word in quotes since the only time the word is uttered is reluctantly and hesitantly indicating the overusing of it in recent times) and leaves all the killing and maiming to Ben, who likely would've went insane without the companionship.

The device used to unite the men are Mickey's headphones, which do different things both both men. Mickey uses them to temporarily close out the world around them; he employs them when he is frazzled or nervous about the dubious times. Ben uses them as a lighter form of escapism, cheerily dancing to Rock Plaza Central's "Anthem for the Already Defeated," making for one of the best scenes in the entire picture.

The Battery works so well because it doesn't try to be just another film capitalizing off of the incredibly childish, overblown idea of a zombie apocalypse, which would be much easier to do in the wake of The Walking Dead and World War Z. An "anti-zombie zombie movie" is the perfect way to describe this picture. Despite placing emphasis on the undead, the film's focus is on the living, making for a very realistic, pragmatic take on a relationship that may come through during such an abhorrent event.

With sun-soaked cinematography by Christian Stella, capturing the woodsy atmosphere and the sweltering climate of the wilderness and vastly open plains of grass and wheat better than any films I've seen in recent years and a soundtrack composed of delightful but not cliché indie rock tunes, aesthetically, The Battery has it all to a tee. This is certainly one of the best looking films of the year, as well. While this is Gardner's first formal outing, he conducts it like an incomparable professional, staging shots that are tricky and clean, making use of a setting for more than twenty minutes, and even holding on one continuous shot for eleven minutes. None of this is boring, by the way. The final act takes place entirely in a van and is one of the most intimate, realistic exchange between two characters I've seen in a film like this, mainly because the conversations and exchange of thought it so typical and atypical to the situation. Regardless, the film is wholly unpredictable and that's one of the highest compliments I can pay to a film.

Stories like Ben and Mickey's are far more interesting than redundant survivalist drama in the wake of an apocalypse or a subversive yet lukewarm look at zombie romanticism. If we're past the point of ques and cinematic semantics and are formally referring to the The Battery as a horror film than this is, by far, the best horror film of 2013. It certainly is one of the best dramas of the year as well. And comedies. And action films. And thrillers. And satires. And films in general.

Starring: Jeremy Gardner and Adam Cronheim. Directed by: Jeremy Gardner.

Ben (Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) survived the zombie apocalypse with a little luck and lots of patience inside a house surrounded by the undead. Now they travel around in the country with a simple strategy to survive: keep moving, so they can't catch us, and stay away from the towns and cities where most of them are lurking.

You might divide Zombie movies into 3 types: stage 1, when zombies only occur on remote islands, while the rest of the world doesn't notice ('White Zombie', 'I Walked With A Zombie', or Lucio Fulci's 'Zombi 2'). Stage 2, when a city is overrun, but with the aid of military forces, mankind may still emerge victorious ('Return of the Living Dead', Lenzi's 'Nightmare City'). Stage 3, when the zombies won and only few survivors are hiding or running ('Day of the Dead', 'Resident Evil: Extinction'). The problem is, too many 'stage 3' movies have been shot in recent years, including the TV series 'The Walking Dead' which took the commercial potential to a whole new level. So, if you pushed apocalypse to the top already, where can you go from there? 'The Battery' aka 'Ben & Mickey vs. the Dead' recognized you cannot push destruction and violence any further, so it takes apocalypse from a huge scale down to a small personal level. Ben and Mickey don't massacre the undead. They just try to stay out of the way and live a life with small pleasures. They'll be happy to find a toothbrush, clean socks, batteries for the CD player or a bottle of booze. The lack of heroic ambition and the wish to avoid fights leads to a lazy life (with the risk of an early demise, nonetheless). If viewers describe the movie as boring, slow or uneventful, that's because the two main characters love to live as uneventful as possible. The orchard, where nobody could pick up the apples because they are all dead, is a quiet and ultimately disturbing symbol for the decay of the world – you don't need to show a burning city for the same statement. The movie is kind of unique in its modesty - and very tongue-in-cheek, too. In my opinion, it deserves to be watched because it takes a different approach to the zombie genre, which is hard to achieve in a genre that accumulated so much attention of movie makers in recent years.

I will admit that there were a few memorable and clever scenes.

Despite this, as a whole the movie was a too-long series of montages set to too many hipster tracks leading to the final act, which actually displayed the potential for a story.

I understand the budget was small, but that doesn't excuse the lack of story. Shouldn't a good film be story and character-driven? I don't really feel that enough time was spent on either. I felt nothing for the characters. Why resort to musical montage filler that doesn't actually contribute anything?

If the intent for this film was to be an artsy vehicle for the writer / director/ producer's musical interests, well then good job!

Nice effort, but I struggled to stay awake.

A low budget movie about 2 baseball players traveling through zombie infested land. That is the basic concept of this feature. I found this movie to be very interesting but in my opinion it would have worked much better as a 25-30min long short flick. I see lot of good ideas bubbling under the surface but it's dragged on by way too many music scenes of those 2 main characters smoking, eating or just doing nothing. that is not the right way to add to the length of the movie. The music was OK :) I see a bright future for all involved, especially Jeremy Gardner. Overall it's well made budget movie. but this flick has too little flesh on the bones to justify the 100min running time.