The Battery

I saw this film at the Imagine film festival 2013 in Amsterdam. The festival website labeled it as Horror, but the IMDb website rightly adds the Drama label as well, the latter better describing the essence of the story. There is no real plot, other than the zombie plague that apparently is spreading. We are left in the dark how and why this came about. The number of zombies in sight is kept to a minimum, being not really important for the story, only needed as entourage creating the circumstances in which the two men have to survive. The few humans they encounter on their journey are hostile on average, only trying to survive like our two main characters. Meanwhile they talk about lost relatives, family members, and (of course) former girl friends whose fate is uncertain.

We see two very different characters, formerly working together as a so-called Battery (a catcher and pitcher couple in baseball), roaming from place to place, eating canned food, using empty houses for shelter when available (after being checked for zombies, and swept clear of it when needed), but otherwise having nothing useful to do other than practicing and quibbling. Their interaction is the real subject of this film, and keeps us interested for the whole 101 minutes running time. The secret ingredient is the humor that is interwoven throughout, and their differences in coping behavior.

The long final scene in the confines of a car is unique. From the Q&A after the screening we learned that it was even 17 minutes long originally, later cut down to 11 minutes, but still stretching the patience of contemporary viewers. But it worked: wondering how this would come to an end (and which end?) kept us alive and prevented a walk out. Unique for the film as a whole is that it adds humanity to the zombie category (a takeaway quote from the Q&A). It shows that it is not always needed to have an abundance of blood&gore in a horror movie to keep us interested. Apparently, this story works as a vehicle to let us think about what might happen when our way-of-life is turned upside-down. How will I cope in such circumstances??

Of course, the post-apocalypse situation always gives rise to questions: where to find petrol (out of stranded cars??), bullets (how to obtain??), and batteries. They burn a lot of the latter, e.g. the walkie-talkies took 4 each, and the continuous use of a discman is utterly irresponsible. But all of that may be wrong questions to ask, especially in this movie that tries to be different and succeeds very well in that, so we really should not be bickering about such tiny details.

All in all, I was very satisfied to put this film on my "must see" list, regardless of the synopsis not sounding that much interesting. But it worked out very well for me, after all, as can be derived from above paragraphs. I scored a maximum (excellent) for the audience award when leaving the theater. As of today, this film ended second (score 8.43) on the audience award listing, so I'm not alone in this.

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.

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.

At last a good zombie flick. Since a long time now. Since 2007 and the rebirth of the zombie genre with 28 WEEKS LATER - a terrific experience as a viewer - we found legion of not only zombies but zombie movies, and not necessarily the best ones. Most of them worth the garbage can. I love this kind of small production, made among pals for six thousand bucks, with a total freedom, and without f...executive to watch every move you make, evaluate how much toilet paper you bring to the men's room. All those jerks who know sh...about movie production, who hardly know how a set is made and who only watch the dol register. Those clerk pricks. Yes, I like this little feature, but I agree with another viewer, it could have been shorter, for instance seventy minutes. It would have been far enough. Sure, the character study is OK. Well done for such a tiny budget. A good little gem.

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.