Edges of Darkness

The end credits says that this film was based on a stage play and it certainly seems that way with almost all the action happening indoors. The film consists of three intertwined stories against a backdrop of a zombie plague but actually the stories could easily have been three separate half-hour plays with no zombies at all. It is my belief that the zombies were mostly a marketing ploy.

The first story is about a couple whose marriage has hit a rough patch with the wife being neglected by the husband who is obsessed with writing a play (or book) and spends all his time on his computer. Unbeknownst to the couple, the computer is cleverer than they realise.

The second story features a vampire couple who take in a young woman who is not what she seems. The couple cannot believe how lucky they are when the young woman lets them drink her blood but there is a price to pay for this largesse.

The DVD cover which shows a Lara Croft look-a-like about to blow away a zombie was the reason I bought the DVD and is the main character in the final story. Our glamorous heroine has rescued a young boy from the zombies, (it did not have to be zombies - it could have been any plague) but two priests believe the boy to be the Antichrist and want to kill him. The question is, is he really the Antichrist or are the priests just religious zealots gone mad?

You see? There really was no need at all for the zombies. To give the film its credit, the zombies were well done and so was the chomping and chewing but perhaps the budget spent on the film could have been better spent in some other way.

One of the main complaints about zombie movies is that they're all so similar. Most "zombie enthusiasts" would disagree and could easily point to a particular film to make their case. This is one such movie. Not only is this different but it adds some new ideas for the zombie genre as well. For example, this movie has 3 different scenarios all against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse in Los Angeles. Unlike a great number of zombie films, this one doesn't start at the beginning of the apocalypse or give the details of how it happened. Instead it focuses on some of the ways a few survivors have coped with it all. What is so interesting is that each of these survivors have their own story to tell and although they live in the same city, none of the stories are interrelated. I won't go into what secrets each of these people harbor but I will say that I thought it was a decent movie because it was so original. Now, I suppose it could have been better if the scenarios were somehow linked together but even so I thought this film had plenty of surprises to keep my attention.

As far as zombie flicks go, it can't get worse than this. Please save your money. Maybe just watch the Walking Dead which deals with the subject matter a lot better.

And the DVD cover was so promising, but that illusion all shattered when I sat down and actually watched the movie. It was just abysmal, and I had to give up about 45 minutes into it, so I made it halfway through.

This is supposed to be an interlinking trilogy of short stories taking place during a zombie apocalypse, but it just didn't function properly. First of all, there was vampires in one of the segments. Yeah, vampires! Secondly, there was a guy was was madly obsessed with his computer, and paid no attention to his wife or the zombie apocalypse outside the window, yeah, that was just so believable. And to make matters worse, then he had ordered some hard drive for his computer, which was delivered by mail. Yep, by mail, apparently during the end of days and a zombie apocalypse, the US Mail is still up and running. That just was just downright stupid! But it doesn't stop there, no! The hard drive apparently was some kind of living organism, capable of sending out tendrils to leech energy from living beings. I wonder who actually thought that this would be a great idea.

I will say that the movie started out tremendously with lots of gore and mayhem, which was nice, and it looked promising, but wow it collapsed into a heap of rubbish so quickly. The stories are driven by laughable plots, bad dialogue and very little coherent connection between the three story lines. The acting, though, well at least that was bearable to behold. So at least the movie gets one point for having adequate actors and actresses on the cast.

For a zombie movie, then "Edges of Darkness" was a horrible disappointment. There was about 5 good minutes worth of gore and mutilation in the 45 minutes that I managed to sit through. The rest that I saw was just rubbish. "Edges of Darkness" is hardly worth the effort, and I know now that it will be bagged, tagged and put on my DVD shelves never to be taken out again.

As a zombie aficionado I was thoroughly bored and disappointed with this movie, and I wouldn't recommend that you pick it up, unless you are a fan of any of the people in the movie. It is an insult to the zombie genre.

Interrelated stories about what happens in various apartments during a zombie take over of the world. After a great start that sets up the world of the film and shows one of the characters rescuing others the film settles into what is going on in three apartments during the nightmare. Most of what occurs is a great deal of talking as everyone talks about what is going on and the weird events that are transpiring. I'm not sure how all of it really relates, like the vampire stuff. As some one said in a review, its as if the writers took all the ideas they had for a bunch of short films and crammed them into one film. It really doesn't work and the stories differences seem to work against each other. For me the promise of the early scenes got lost in the talk and unrelated nonsense. I got to the point that when the phone rang I took the call and just let the movie run. Which is not a good sign. I'd take a pass