Rating: C+
Dir: Joe Zerull
Star: Daniel Rairdin-Hale, Hanlon Smith-Dorsey, Yosh Hayashi, Ben Hopkins
This got off to a bit of a ropey start. Two minutes in, Chris dropped her neutron bomb of scathing sarcasm. “Is this… a Brain Damage film?”, she said, which is the equivalent of a hanging judge donning his black cap and preparing to pass the death sentence. For this was offering an awkward and self-consciously ugly combination of low-def video and fake film scratch effects, the latter having passed its sell-by date shortly after Grindhouse. However, we persisted, and the end result is generally watchable, to the point that most of the limited resources recede into the background. While it’s still far from perfect, and won’t exactly become a Christmas classic, it wasn’t the lump of coal initially feared.
It unfolds over the course of one night, beginning on Christmas Eve in a bar where the town drunk, Tom Tunninbum (Smith-Dorsey), is propped up at the bar owned by Eddie (Hopkins). In staggers the Janitor (Rairdin-Hale), drenched in blood. Eddie calls the police, and soon after arrives Sam Sheriff (Hayashi), complete with a pervert he’s arrested in tow. The story the Janitor tells defies belief, of being attacked at the university by a series of re-animated corpses, and only just managing to fend them off. Sheriff – who, it turns out, is actually an ex-cop, seeking reinstatement – refuses to believe any of it, so drags everyone to the campus building in question.
Turns out the Janitor was not lying. The group, along with a plucky campus security intern, are all that stand between the cadavers and the outside world, where they may prove unstoppable. They discover the cause is an experiment carried out by Professor Hildencress, who was hoping to cure a degenerative brain disease with a snail parasite. It didn’t quite have the desired effect, and what resulted are highly infectious zombies, that are hard to put down. Outside of the festive setting, there’s not particularly much new here, though in the movie’s defense the genre wasn’t as thoroughly played-out back in 2011. We hit most of the expected points: the infected person who turns, heroic sacrifice, a last, desperate stand, etc. Nothing here you haven’t seen often enough elsewhere.
On the positive side, there is a rough energy to it which keeps most of it watchable. The performances are good, especially considering how few of the characters are anything close to likeable. Though I could have done without the extended sequence of someone fucking a corpse. No, really. Zerull doesn’t hold back on the gore, which is nicely practical and energetically applied. He might have leaned more into the Christmas setting, I feel. Outside of some decorations used as a barricade (top) and a choir of zombie carol-singers, it feels like there are several helpings of figgy pudding left on the table. And I did look at my watch, being surprised there was still half an hour to go, which suggests some pacing issues. However, I’ve seen an awful lot worse in the low-budget zombie field, without question.