Before Dawn

Okay, well first of all I have go to put out a warning to anyone buying this movie from the DVD cover, as I did, don't look at the cover and get your hopes up! You will be sorely disappointed. On the cover you see a man standing alone with a rifle and a smoking city in the horizon. This is not even in the movie, nor does it have anything remotely to do with the movie. But it gets better. There is also a really cool looking zombies there in the gash, along with a whole army of zombies behind it, again, not there in the movie. False advertisement at its best.

That being said, let me just say right away that despite this false advertising and cheap tricks to lure people into buying the movie, then "Before Dawn" is actually quite good once it gets up in speed and pace. The movie was actually quite enjoyable. The movie is rather slow at getting into gear and tends to drag on and on without getting anywhere. Well, right up until Meg (played by Joanne Mitchell) goes jogging, then things pick up pace and gets interesting.

There is only a handful of zombies in the movie, but the make-up on these was actually quite good. Now, anyone familiar with my reviews will know that I am not a fan of agile and fast-running zombies, as the ones in "Before Dawn" are. It is just not my thing. But still, the effects and make-up on the zombies here worked really well. One thing, aside from the running, that I didn't appreciate about the zombies in this movie, was the predatory growling sounds that they emitted, it was just too odd and misplaced.

And there isn't a lot of people in the movie, so there is a lot of weight on the shoulders on those on the screen, and they did good jobs with their given roles. Thumbs up for that.

As for the ending of the movie, well... I will not spoil anything here by saying how it ends. But it is one of those types of endings that you will either love or hate. I didn't really appreciate it and found it to be a bit too cliché and predictable.

"Before Dawn" is a great addition to any zombie aficionado's zombie movie collection. It is enjoyable and has a good amount of violence and just enough gore to keep even most gorehounds happy. Britain does spew out a good amount of enjoyable zombie movies.

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.

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.

I had the good fortune to see this picture at Frightfest 13. The film opens with beautiful shots of the British countryside, immediately making you think "how can anything bad happen here".

But being a movie with the living dead you already know the answer.

This is an intimate film as you follow this couple on there last ditch attempt to save their marriage. Indeed the film could have played out as the final death throes of a relationship without the invasion of zombies and indeed Dominic Brunt's desperation to resuscitate what has died is palpable.Joanne Mitchell as Meg is superb and makes a potentially unsympathetic character someone you care about.The acting is measured non-histrionic and understated.Everything is very real.

The message of the film could very much be "there are greater horrors in life than zombies".

Although they are flesh eating zombies in the film this could easily be enjoyed as a companion piece to "28 Days Later".

The waves of horror that wash over you and the emotional ride Dominic Brunt goes through are brilliant.

A cracking script, a strong cast,, and excellent camera work allow you to over look the perhaps not perfect make-up or the overdubbing, but this is to be too critical of a film that succeeds to strike a different note in the genre and bring a solid sense of reality and horror to what is happening whether it's the zombies or the death of a marriage.

Recommended.

BEFORE DAWN is a low budget, low rent zombie movie, made and filmed in Yorkshire by husband and wife team Dominic Brunt and Joanne Mitchell. Brunt is best known to viewers of UK TV as the lovable Paddy in the long-running soap EMMERDALE, so watching him battle vicious zombies in this film (which he also wrote and directed) is something of a novelty.

Unfortunately the novelty value is just about all this has going for it, because boy, BEFORE DAWN is bad. I actually didn't mind the ultra slow, family drama of the first half, purely because the horror comes subtle and there's a growing sense of unease which works really well. Some nice location photography really adds to the experience and I was left with high hopes for the rest of the production.

Sadly the zombie denouement is less than impressive and something you'd expect to see in the likes of shot-on-video trash like ZOMBIE CHRONICLES. Brunt unwisely employs some extreme (and ludicrous) shaky-cam effects for the zombie attack sequences, which are overblown and ridiculous. There's no zombie horde here, no shambling menace, just a story that peters out leading to an anticlimax that makes you think "that's it?". I like Brunt but a dearth of originality makes BEFORE DAWN one of the worst zombie movies out there.