Dawn of the Lead

Opstandelsen (or Resurrection, if you’re not fluent in Danish) is an indie zombie short(ish, around 50 minutes) directed by Casper Haugegaard. It presents a lovely vignette: during a funeral, zombies happen. Four people, all family, survive by hiding under the church and then spend the rest of the film trying to make it out alive. The main dramatic tension is between two brothers, one of them the straight-up one and the other a drug addict.

The movie left me with mixed, but mostly positive feelings. It’s very compact and well-focused. Even so, the movie does suffer a bit from balancing issues. In a movie like this, featuring a very small cast with in-story blood ties, I would’ve liked to see more character interaction and dialogue. There was some, and what was there was good. I liked the actors (Mads Althoff and Jonas Bjørn Andersen) portraying the two brothers. They had nice chemistry between them and managed to convey the relationship of two different brothers well. This stuff leaves you wanting more, so I was a bit disappointed with the decision to replace a lot of that with running around dark corridors in a panic. Which brings me to my next point.

A large part of Opstandelsen is spent shaky-cam running in the dark. This is very Blair Witch Project-y, which is a double-edged sword. On one hand it does get a bit confusing at times, and there is a bit too much of it, which might put people off. On the other it does manage to make the movie feel very personal. The cramped, dark corridors are scary and there is a genuine sense of urgency, panic and even claustrophobia. I might be wrong, but I guess that this was partly a budget thing as well – a dark setting doesn’t require very much propping or makeup after all. Still, I think the movie excels in the parts not spent running around. When you have good actors, you’d do well to get as much mileage out of them as possible.

Another little disappointment for me was the minimal attention given to the actual zombie attack on the funeral crowd. The few flashes seen are excellent, and the church itself is a wonderful setting. Again, this adds to the personal feeling of the movie as the viewer pretty much sees what the characters see. Still, every now and then this viewer would’ve liked to see some more.

The zombies themselves are nicely put together, and there is some good makeup present. There is a bit of variation in the quality though – some of the gore sequences are absolutely breathtakingly disgusting and visceral, while at times some of the characters just look like some fake theatre blood has been thrown on them. The gore does deserve a special mention. The combination of makeup and sickening sound effects makes for truly awful (in a good sense) death and devouring scenes. Make no mistake about it, Opstandelsen is brutal.

The cinematography left me a little perplexed. Other parts of the movie look like they’ve been shot in video while others look like film. Video tends to contribute to a cheap, soap opera look, but works surprisingly well in Opstandelsen. Still I was left wondering, why the difference in styles? There doesn’t seem to be any major discernible reason, and the contrast eats a bit of the movie’s coherence.

There’s a lot of critique above, so it might be surprising that I actually liked Opstandelsen a quite a lot. The main reason might just be that the whole setting and look of the thing is very Scandinavian. The familiar look contributes to a feeling of personal attachment, which is very good in any horror movie. Despite the low-budget look I found myself intensely drawn to the film for its duration – which by the way is pretty much spot on. A few minutes of corridor running could’ve been cut, but I still liked the film’s pacing.

Overall verdict: An intense zombie short film, which suffers from some of the usual low-budget problems but manages to make itself work nevertheless. Opstandelsen is far from perfect, but still an excellent way to spend fifty minutes of your life. Something is definitely rotten in the state of Denmark. Luckily, it’s not this movie.

You can get the film on dvd from CDON.com, for example.

Toxic Lullaby (directed by Ralf Kemper) is a German indie zombie TV-flick with an interesting premise: a girl goes on a massive drug trip, and when she wakes up, she has no idea who or where she is. Oh, and the world is in shambles. Hooking up with a bunch of mysterious survivors, the girl needs to find out what exactly has happened and what is going on. A nice premise, no? Unfortunately, the execution is lacking.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve said it, but the focal point of a zombie movie are its characters. Toxic Lullaby has lots and lots of those. Sadly, they’re all left at the “cardboard cut-out” level, basically just names and faces. That is TL’s biggest failing. Throughout the film not one of the characters is even a bit likeable, mainly because there’s nothing to like. Actually, there’s not even much to dislike.  In a zombie/survival movie this is a huge miss, since you usually want your viewers to bond with the survivors. Instead, what we have here is just a bunch of people running around. This is strike one for Toxic Lullaby.

The film goes for a very trippy feel, kind of like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without the humour and in German. This is actually done quite well, as there is a genuine feeling of disorientation and trippyness. The downside is that it’s very hard to connect with the movie, as it seems to lack coherence. There are the unknown people mentioned above, and they’re doing things in unkown places for unknown reasons and motives. Sure, this is what it would feel like for the main character. For the viewer, however, it gets very frustrating after a while: “Who are these guys? Who are those guys? They came here because…? Now why did he just do that?” This lack of coherence makes Toxic Lullaby somewhat taxing to watch, and accounts for strike two for the film.

Of course in any zombie movie review, attention must be given to the zombies themselves. In Toxic Lullaby they’re called sleepers, as they’re mostly inactive during daytime. The zombies are pretty basic, just people in quick makeup akin to Romero’s first two films. The sleepers pop up every now and then, when they attack and usually kill someone. This is sadly done in fairly lazy action scenes with not much intensity. And of course, the characters killed are the non-characters mentioned above, so their killing isn’t much cause for drama. Also, the zombies seem to be almost like an afterthought. The movie mainly focuses on a broken-down society, with the sleepers simply adding a bit of a random element to it. As with the characters and the plot, the zombies lack focus. Why are they there? How big of a threat are they, actually? Because of this lack of focus, even the sleepers’ shining moment of mass destruction doesn’t convey the feelings it should. Zombies – strike three for Toxic Lullaby.

After all this honest and somewhat brutal critique, I must point out that the film isn’t without its merits. I actually liked the whole post-apocalyptic imagery and the locations that went with it such as abandoned buildings. The ending actually makes the movie make a lot more sense. The trippyness works, if you’re into style like that. It was pretty nice for me. The cinematography was nice, with a good contrast between the post- and pre-apocalyptic worlds. The acting wasn’t too bad, even if it wasn’t anything special either. Certainly decent for a low-budget feature!

Overall verdict: Toxic Lullaby is an ambitious project sadly let down by a lack of focus. With no real characters to relate to and no places or situations to recognize, the viewer is left feeling detached – something you don’t want to happen if you’re making a zombie film. Even with low production values, the film looks nice enough. With a better script Toxic Lullaby could’ve been very good. As it stands, however, I can  suggest seeing it only for its curiosity value.

Toxic Lullaby is available on dvd from Amazon.de as well as other sites.