Parkingtigers

I was lucky enough to catch a screening of this movie at the Sci-fi Oktoberfest at the Apollo Cinema in central London. It was the first movie in a zombie quadruple-bill, an all night gorefest. Quite frankly I was expecting this unknown low-budget horror to be as awful as it sounded, but it actually turned out to be the best movie of the night in many ways. The director and main star of the film were both in attendance, and I had a chance to congratulate Marc Price on creating a damn fine little movie on what was clearly a shoestring budget.

Let's get the downsides out of the way first. The ultra-low budget really does hurt the film. The camera-work and lighting are the biggest victims, in that what might have been intended as a naturalistic documentary style is actually just a mess of incredibly shaky video footage. Marc Price admitted that he was unhappy with the dark/night scenes as they were still perhaps a bit too dark. On the plus side, the sounds and music are very well done and they manage to carry the sometimes dodgy visuals.

The real lure of this film however, is the the story. Rather than explaining the hows, the whats and the whys of this particular zombie apocalypse, it simply focuses on a single zombie and follows his shambling journey from death to undeath while civilisation comes to a grinding halt in the background. Other movies in the genre have the zombies as a faceless horde of implacable eating machines, but "Colin" plucks one half-eaten face from the crowd and makes him a highly believable character. I never thought this would happen, but I felt genuine empathy for Colin at times. As he shuffles around a London that is collapsing in upon itself, various groups of human survivors cross his path offering snapshots of other untold stories that are occurring at the same time. There is the man being slowly and quietly eaten to death, the group of grim-faced zombie-hunters, the man with a secret in his cellar, the grieving sister ... every one of these stories gives hints of the wider chaos that must be going on, making this a very believable, and very English, zombie uprising.

This is a film that absolutely deserves to be seen by a wider audience. I can only hope that a distribution company picks it up and ensures that it gets a full release in the same way that other low budget films like Blair Witch Project and Open Water did. Ideally, I'd like to see a studio offer Marc Price the money to make a shot for shot remake but with professional level equipment. The story is very strong, it seems that even zombies can have a character arc and a sense of purpose, and there are so many clever ideas in both the script and the execution. There are some moments of subtle humour, lashings of blood, and at least one moment that was genuinely terrifying. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing more work from this novice director, there is real talent on display here. It might look low budget, but script- wise this is as strong as anything being released by the major studios.

If you have ever enjoyed a good zombie film, then do seek out "Colin" because it is truly a fine example of the genre. It's quite literally a film for people with braiiiiiiiiins.