Zombie Diaries
Introduction
Introduction
My friend has the night terrors every night. He’s got as sideways a head as mine, but his is due to religion, too much time as an EMT and Fireman, and a stint in the Army. Plus, let me stress he was Raised With Religion. Home-schooled, too.
So this cat and I go out into the desert and mind you, I’ve got a prescription for 25-100mg of trazadone to sleep, and he’s got one for something like 400mg of the shit, just to get through the night without waking up screaming and waving knives at imaginary terrors. I made that last part up.
But he and I go out in the desert and take mushrooms and wander around and he wakes up the next day and is all content and “I didn’t have nightmares last night.”. And I’m stoked for my buddy, because I also have sleeping issues and know how unhappy life can get if sleeping isn’t working correctly.
I don’t remember if that night I had anything special for dreams. Pretty much a neat point to register and then you move on. And I did. By a week. And then my wife and I were wandering around a slightly different desert on mushrooms, and when I went to sleep that night, I had absolute bullshit nightmares.
The worst was about Kanye West. He wasn’t in the dream, but… He was a force in the dream, a figure menacing and overshadowing like Vader and his Death Star. In my dream though, we were working in one of those underwater habitats like from Leviathan or The Abyss, where it’s essentially a space movie except it’s terrestrial and simply underwater.
Is it still terrestrial then? I’m not going to look it up. And it was Friday. And closing in on 7pm. It was much past 6pm. I was damn sure that I was the last one to leave- again. I was pissed. The whole building was quiet as I made my way out.
“Why the fuck do I always end up getting screwed as the last guy out every week?” I thought, feeling that things were quite unfair. As I walked past an office, Kanye West’s office, I noticed that he had a book on his desk with a picture of his big goofy smiling face on the cover, and the arrogance of Kanye having a book about Kanye kinda snapped something within me simmering over about once again being the last to leave, and I impulsively lashed out and slapped the book spinning, off of his desk and onto the floor in the center of the office.
I kept walking, and a moment later I was out of the building, feeling quite “I stood up for myself by fucking with that book!” and then as my ass hits the seat of my car I realize I forgot something in the office. Shit. So I get back up and out and head back and beep my way into the office, and as I’m walking back to get what I forgot, as I pass Kanye’s office I see that the book is back on his desk, where it was before I slapped it.
This is a moment of instant panic. This is the moment where strutting becomes aware of an actual apex predator and begins to instead quickly saunter, where I realized that there was also someone else still at work within the office, someone so senior to me that they existed in a realm of seeing without being seen.
I almost shit myself trying to figure out if the janitor staff could be in the building- maybe one of them saw the book down on the floor and put it back up on the desk because that’s the kind of thing people who aspire to become janitors look forward to doing.
But no, I instinctively knew that I had been observed, maybe through some camera or pin-hole in the wall, but I’d been seen throwing my disrespectful little temper-tantrum and throwing Kanye West’s book across the room. Why does this shit always go down on a Friday? Now I’m going to need to wait until Monday to learn what the fucking repercussions of this stupidity of mine are, am I still going to have a job?
Walking in at 8am and walking out at 8:10am is hella embarrassing, especially ‘cause there’s always that one asshole who’s habitually late, and as you slump your dejected, recently unemployed ass back to your car they inevitably greet you with “Hey, you’re heading the wrong way!” which really just hits you as “I flout breaking the rules to the degree that I’m always late and I’m still a better employee than you when you actually try.”
In fact, that about sums up my career. But guess what? There’s no feeling sorry for oneself when it’s your problem to begin with! Now I know that I’m difficult to work with. Now I know that I’m disrespectful and insubordinate. Now I know I don’t take my responsibilities seriously, nor am I ready to publicly represent anyone or anything. Now I know that I have been under email monitoring for the past months and HR’s analysis of my usage is 78% conversational with an out-of-company contact. Now I know that I’m the problem.
And once again, I’ve created a problem for myself. I want to seek out this more powerful being and attempt to throw myself at their mercy, to explain my pique of anger, to rationalize my immature behavior with empirical proof that I’m at least willing to put the lip service towards looking like I’m trying my hardest…
But if a fucking janitor picked up the book, and I barge into some VP’s office explaining that I’ve had a very bad day and that I’m really apologetic… and they say… “What are you talking about?”.
Then I have to kind of chuckle nervously and rub my scalp and say “I was just throwing books in another executive’s office… but I seriously didn’t mean anything by it.” Do I go looking for the janitorial staff to see if any of them will even pull their headphones out of their ears, let alone listen and answer me?
But the janitorial staff are probably on first name golf-playing basis with whatever VIP is still in the building, since the VIPS often work late and janitors are notorious for following their patterns whether you’re at your desk or not.
I really don’t know how that dream ended. I think I went looking for anyone to talk to, to try to have a good interaction that would make me feel less like I was under suspicion or the gun so maybe I’d be able to convince myself that everything would be fine on Monday.
There’s a… charring of one’s confidence when you get fired. Once it becomes habitual, one’s approach to employment becomes similar to that of a drug addict doing anything possible to hold that job as if it were a fleeting high, since having a job makes you feel better about yourself than being unemployed does.
Being employed is like a high. I once again feel like crying. I’ve loved all my jobs before hating them. I’m afraid to start the cycle again, but there’s a loneliness and feeling of inadequacy that comes from being afraid to try again.
The neighbor a street down is crazy. We’re talking standing in the middle of the lawn saluting cars, wandering downtown belly-laughing at nothing, sitting against a fence screaming and gesturing as if he had just been cheated in a dice game… Lately, when I drive by, he’s out there under the hood of what looks like a mid-80’s monte-carlo.
Is that my future? Maybe not bi-polar or whatever he’s rocking, but, like, is that who my friends are going to be? Did you enjoy elementary school? Was your recess essentially the most caste-oriented system since early 1400’s India? Were you a jock? A smart girl? A tough guy? Were you one of the smart kids? The class clowns? The overly-serious life-planned out briefcase and button-downs?
I was known as the kid who stuck sticks through bugs, and who spit onto ants, and who got up after falling down without brushing himself off or fixing his hair. I was the kid who hit the t-ball stand so hard it fell over three times in a row, but never actually hit the ball, so got to walk to first long enough to feel like I was actually a part of the game before being too late off the crack and getting tagged out at second.
Aside from dreaming about fucking with Kanye’s shit and then being petrified of the potential upcoming consequences, I also dreamed a pretty close repeat to New York, in which I was on mushrooms and riding the subway around, trying to get somewhere.
I don’t remember where I was trying to get to, but I kept coming up from underground and it’d be day, then night, and there’d be a bay, and then nothing but concrete, and I was fucked sideways and didn’t care. I had everything I could need in my backpack, including bear mace.
I ended up walking off the subway in Seattle, about half-way down the hill to the bay, and I decided to get out of the tunnels and sit for a while and enjoy the sunset while I was obliterated. I was walking down the street, literally down, since this is Seattle, and there’s a fat guy in a grey t-shirt spray painting something all over a wall.
He’s just starting it, and it looks pretty ambitious, so as I wander by, I say something like “Hey man, I like your style.” meaning- “Big respect to you for committing this sort of vandalization in broad daylight!” And he replies something about Biden. I voted for Biden, but don’t really consider him my president. He’s… a dead fern blowing in the breeze. Biden has no life, no fire. Please, prove me wrong, but…
If the republicans had put forward anyone other than the Cheeto, I’d have been jumped ship. Fuck, I’d love to see a version of the multi-verse where McCain got a chance to run the country. McCain/Bill Clinton. I’m just talking crazy shit now.
But the spray paint guy started yelling at me about how he’s not going to take Biden’s shit anymore, and I’m tripping, thinking to myself “I’ve spent 3 days totally out of the loop. What the hell could have happened?” and I’m imagining some repeat of Benghazi but the guy won’t stop talking shit for me to ask him anything so I decided to bear mace him.
Kinda partially out of the excuse of Civic Duty to stop the vandalism, but that’s just rationalizing lip service to the fact that I didn’t like this guy yelling at me when I’d tried to compliment him, and I didn’t like the energy he was putting out, so I pulled my canister and tried to pop the orange locker off the trigger, and instead I got a drizzle of bear mace concentrate all over my hand, and when I did get the thing set up correctly to fire, the pressure must have already bled out somehow because it just pissed oily reddish shit all over the concrete.
The same stuff I had all over my hand. I knew if I got that stuff anywhere near my face I was fucked. The guy was oblivious to the fact that I’d just massively failed at attacking him, but other people were starting to gather around, asking questions, talking, yelling shit, making assumptions…
I remember stuffing the empty and useless bear mace container back into my backpack, and then hot-footing it out of there before anything came of my botched attempt. The last I remember, I was cautiously running away from the scene, wondering where and how I was going to get my hand cleaned.
I suppose this is where I decide if I’m even going to attempt a movie review tonight, or if I should just chill out and wait for my summons. See, tonight, I’m James. Or whatever his name in Driving Miss Daisy was. The wife is out at Margarita night with the girls, and I’m sitting here with a phone waiting to come pick her up. She said it’d probably be over around 10, which means I have no chance at getting a review in.
But- maybe… I do want to start one. Even though I have no idea what to watch. Zombie Diaries There. Simple enough. “At the end of the 21st century, an unknown virus spreads throughout the world. Within weeks it engulfs the entire planet, leaving the planet infested with the undead.” There. Simple enough.
Got some discrepancy in Amazonians giving it 4 stars, while IMDB gives it a 4. Maybe this is some sort of pre-cat-glitch? Dropped the $7 to purchase it, too. Chances are I’ll be summoned before I finish it. How redundant is that description, though? We do got two directors though, so that could have contributed something…
(6/8) It’s a couple days later and I fully intend to watch this movie. I have a banging headache at the minute. It’s probable exacerbated by the fact I just used a propane torch to burn all the hair off my toes. Fuck hobbits. My toes still sting.
The trick is that you have to do multiple fast passes, like strafing runs, and get rid of the charred tops after each run. My hand stinks. The house stinks. The dog is still asleep, but I can hear her nose snuffling as she snores. I wonder how this smell processes into a sleeping dog’s subconscious.
I had a doctors appointment today where I believe she gave me approval for the mushroom thing. It’s like selling drugs, you can’t actually talk about things up front. But I told her “I’ve been taking a lot of mushrooms lately and I plan on taking more.” her response was something like “As a doctor, I’m not legally allowed to say that I think self-medicating with mushrooms is a good idea, because it’s still federally illegal. Are you aware of all the research about micro (and regular) dosing assisting in the development of new neural pathways?”.
So… we started up another bag of poop. Let’s see how it does. Dumping out that green mold was heartbreaking. So, while I’m writing this and hoping the house stops reeking of burnt hair and wondering why my left toes now feel cold while my right still sting with heat… I really should do this movie.
Have I mentioned my banging headache? In hindsight, lighting all the hair on my feet probably didn’t help it. I’m tired. I want to lie my head and shoulders down on the table I’m writing at, but I also need the lights to get turned off somehow. I’m adjusting my screen’s brightness but I can’t tell the difference. My eyes smell toast.
Although I rarely got it, I never minded detention. It was always a good time to sleep. Or read. Or both. What a stupid system. You get in trouble for not paying attention and then your punishment is to have to sit in a room with nothing assigned for a while. What are you supposed to learn from this?
Gnats are so small and stupid and insignificant, but they’re still a thing. Detention. “the action of detaining someone or the state of being detained in official custody, especially as a political prisoner”. See, I always knew that was the literal description of the word, but in practical usage as is our school systems, it’s more a way of tacking another useless period onto the end of the day.
And you can go home if you feel like it, you just get in more trouble and have to stay home. Because you went home. But in detention, which you’re there voluntarily because you’re trying to show that even though they appear to be written from a stupidly punitive point, we understand that you want us to still show we adhere to your rules and respect your authority.
So the reality of it is that it shouldn’t be called “Detention”; which implies German Shepherds and coils of razor wire, it should be called “Delayed”, meaning, we’re still going to go do whatever the fuck it was we were going to do after school anyway, but now we’ve been delayed for about an hour. If I’m going over to M___ or T__’s house after school to smoke pot and listen to Bowie, or if I’m headed to J___’s to play D&D, I’m still going to do that. I’ve just been delayed.
You know a synonym for delayed? Retarded. Which we’re not allowed to say anymore. “The timing in this vehicle should be retarded by about 4 degrees in order for the new cam to run better.” That’s a perfectly logical, non-pejorative use of a technical word that’s been first co-opted by mothers to describe their children in automotive terms to promote social acceptance, then co-opted by the playground to mean “Of the uncool lesser castes, but not as badly alienated as the gays, (insert appropriate slur if you feel inclined), (or racial invective if preferred, be you a Southern reader.)”
Does anyone else remember that fucking “Up With People” shit from elementary school? I can still sing a couple verses of that song. I just looked it up online. Sponsored by Haliburton and Nixon and shit. I was going to say I hate adults… and I do. But I hate some children too, if I’m being honest.
Really got to start this movie. Stinks like burnt hair. And my right foot kinda still hurts. Or, it’s tender. On top. Lemme say this. Training Day had some cool little camera tricks and shit, plus Denzel, and that made it pretty cool. The Tax Collector or plural or whatever… No. Shia, just because you can well up your eyes and look intent, it doesn’t make the script anything worth anything.
I’ve never fed a donkey before, but that’s the first thought I came up with thinking about that movie’s script. Standing at a fence in some quiet, green place, ripping pages out of it and feeding them to a donkey. I feel compelled to watch the 1967 Bond classic You Only Live Twice.
My sinus headache is doing a bit better. I have hearing loss due to teenage use of Walkman headphones, and my wife, being the 4th girl in an Asian Mother household, speaks very softly. We’re currently playing the “mumble mumble mumble” “WHAT?” “I was talking to my socks!” game, and it just occurred to me that I have no idea what she said to me as she got into her car to leave for work tonight.
Or rather, after she got into her car and continued talking to me as if she were still standing, talking over the roof of her car. I was stuck in a cycle of enjoying saying the same thing over and over again. I think it was something like “Yes, dear! I love you!” and… I didn’t feel like yelling “WHAT?” at her again for something that was most probably inconsequential. I can’t wait until… fuck, I don’t know what. Hearing aids? Are you shitting me? Maybe that’s why I keep getting the urge to listen to a .38. Fucking ear doesn’t work worth shit as it is.
Going through life not knowing what is being said doesn’t work worth shit, either. I don’t know why I’m obsessing over this. My right ear feels off. But I’ve stuck my finger into it multiple times and it’s not helping. It’s like I want to use a chopstick to itch the inside of it.
How many forks do you think the average person would have to throw, ninja-style, before they could get one to stick into, say… a melon of some sort? I think I’ve found what I’m doing next weekend. Not… next weekend… but… I want to be taken out into the desert- with tent, water, supplies… And left for a week.
I want to spend a week doing nothing. Unable to do anything. Unable to go anywhere. Fucking chain my ankle to a tree and take my pants, I don’t care. What does a week feel like when your neural network is the highest electrical technology there is within a 50 mile radius?
Could I ever get enough of sleeping? I need to read Robinson Crusoe again. I haven’t read it since I was a child, but I know it’s all I’ve ever wanted. When the ship is finally washed away, I felt elation where he felt horror. I wonder now if the ship’s wreckage symbolized the possibility of rescue to me, and with such present, I felt one would be unable to fully commit to the beautiful simplicity of aloneness, or rather, almost-aloneness in complete remoteness.
I don’t want to be normal. That implies I want to be. If I think, therefore I am; I feel, therefore I am. If I feel, therefore, I am; I exist by feeling. How do you feel? How do I feel? What do you feel? Why do you feel? Are our reasons the same? Are some reasons more valid than others?
In nature, the sick and insane are culled out by nature, or the herd. In humanity, we incarcerate them all together but then request politeness. Goddamn, I need help with accountability; I still haven’t gone to go get punched in the head yet. I’m so tired.
I think I may be delaying doing reviews at the moment because I don’t feel capable of feeling anything at the movie. That’s why I want Bond. There’s nothing to feel. Fuck you, Shia. You’re not the only one with welling eyes. Fuck it. I’ve decided to throw in the towel tonight. My old dog wants me to come to bed to snuggle, I can listen to MST3K and go to sleep. I can try again tomorrow. “and I don’t love you anymore, what do you want to talk to me for?” -Ramones. God, they had some good love songs. “Baby, I love you…”
(6/10) Ok. That was sad. I’m feeling something better now. Not good. But I feel like I may be headed back up. Am I fucking bi-polar, too? Let’s drink some coffee, take a toke, and then watch a zombie movie. Finally.
I feel like I’m clawing back a piece of my soul by writing this; my wife has evidently made her own Flavored Starbucks Sugar Syrup. Which is black, and was stored in the ‘fridge in a mason jar. The same way I store the last cup or two of a batch of cold brew while I’m making a fresh one. So… I thought it was coffee. A horrendous mistake. A horrendous, very sweet, almond scented to the point of resembling cat urine tasting mistake.
I feel like I should be smiling as I write this. I should find humor in it. It’s effort just to type it, and I don’t think it’s funny anymore. I don’t think I’m funny anymore. What would happen if I walked into the emergency room and told them I was contemplating killing myself because I wasn’t funny anymore? “You get what you deserve!”
I met with my doctor. We’re decreasing the anti-depression meds. Pretty empirical evidence after a decade that you can’t pill-pop your way to lasting happiness. She approves of my recent mushroom forays. She’s hip to the neurological pathway re-training and all that grey matter fungus shit.
I want to go look at the poop bags, but not until the 18th. I can feel Me trying to push through all this, I know I’m lost somewhere in here. I want a cigarette. Now, I want to puke at the thought of it. Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
I hate that our fingernails keep growing. I hate typing when they’re anything other than fresh cut, but… I’m phobic about cutting my nails. There. My life in a fucking sentence. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
I hate long fingernails but I get squeamish and disgusted when I cut my nails due to the physical sensation coming from the finger whose nail is getting cut. “I feel like when my dog dies, I should go to the Ukraine front and fight until I get wounded or killed, or kill someone, and then maybe that’ll help me understand why I’m here.” That’s what I told my doctor.
She asked me to make sure I reach out to the diagnosing therapist this week. I still have until tomorrow. Fuck it, C_____, what was it like?? What is it like?? Come back and talk to me, man. I miss you and need your advice. Le’sigh. Time to cap this pity party and do some work.
Review Notes
Review Notes
Cough cough, roll tape.
This feels good. I like the blue of the Lionsgate logo.
Well, we start off fast and loud. A bunch of soldiers running around a farm and yelling. Looks like Europe.
The loud yeller guy uses the same “On me!” command I use with my dogs.
Now we have people in haz mat suits examining a corpse in a field. Looks like shot in the head?
I’m pretty sure we’re looking at a low budget affair.
Using the news to explain the plot… pretty typical. A lot of talk about “Cases” and “Figures” while crowds of people walk around cities. It’s pretty much Coronavirus all over again. But this came out first.
Day 1. A bunch of people getting interviewed in the streets.
Everyone has a very strong accent.
So, our perspective is from that of a television crew.
Mrs. Buckley? Who is she? Nice couch.
Being interviewed about the virus. It’s like bird flu. And the cold. We know nothing about this virus. Yeah, this is pretty familiar.
We meet our three main characters?
Now we’re in the newsroom and some geezer (using English slang) Just took a minute to hit YouTube and listen to The Streets “Never Went to Church”. Damn, that’s a beautiful song. Makes me think about my dad and how damaged our relationship is and how little time we have left. That makes me sad, but… I can’t help understanding that there’s a part of me that will feel “free” when he passes. Is this more Best/Worst of times bullshit? Is that the human experience?
So, I think the film crew is going somewhere, but everything over there is named so silly that I can’t understand much of it. “Blimey”. See??
Now they’re in some village. Driving through it and arguing if the cameraman should be filming.
Ok, there’s 4 of them. And it’s really strange to keep seeing the woman in the left hand passenger seat keep turning around to talk to the camera. I’m like “AH! Grab the wheel!” but then the guy is driving.
Going to a poultry farm to discuss a cull. Sounds like a country western song full of innuendo.
Two women, a guy, and then the camera-carrying-thing. Sasquatch?
They’re yelling at each other again. The farmer is not there. Oh! I see the cameraman! He propped the camera on the car’s hood so he could be in the picture.
Some sort of car problems. Raising the hood, steam coming out. Universal. Chances are duct tape or bailing wire is all they need. Said the guy who’s about to put a AK round through his Jeep.
Broken down in the village, there’s no-one around. They have yet to see anyone else.
Hat is yelling into the phone about being stuck. “Tailbacks” “Underground”
Oh. There’s a quarantine.
Hat decides they heading back to the farm.
So they yell at each other a moment further.
I feel like Valium is the only thing keeping me alive.
Back at the farm, still no-one home. So they break in.
The farmer’s name is Mr. West. I love this movie already!
I mean, really… it’s kinda slow.
More yelling at each other.
And the lights just went out! There’s really no sense of “scary” to this though. It’s like a script reading.
Oh! Thunking coming from upstairs!
I am sick of looking up Hat’s nose.
Heading upstairs to have a look…
Opening the door with the star on it first…
Bathroom… blinded…
Again…
Last door opens…
Billie Joe from Green Day is disemboweled on the floor.
Oh! Shit! ZOMBIE! And fuck, it’s a scary one.
Hat! Don’t flee! Fight!
They’re all bailing and running out into the night.
There’s another zombie out there. They’re kinda dumb and shambling.
It’s devolved into darkness, a lantern swinging around, random shots of zombies, and screaming.
Now that they’re properly lost in the woods, they decide to hunker down and start a camp-fire.
Day 2. Scavengers.
Oh. Wait. This is one month later.
In a car now.
Gonna risk their lives for supplies.
And people are quite pissed off at each other.
They’re a bunch of snarks.
Is… there a new guy in the group?
Got a dead body. Damn. That’s well done.
“What a shame we don’t live in a more gun friendly society. Like YOURS.” Something feels weird about this.
Oh shit! The body is gone!
Camera man just got grabbed, Sean shot it in the head. Good too.
*flips the corpse off
Back in town, we have strewn newspapers to indicate the demise of humanity.
They’re… breaking into a computer store.
“pinching”
Dead spider. That was fucking weird. Why?
Knocking from the door… Just the wind. Famous last words.
FOODSTORE. Really? Is life that basic there?
Greg has found the “All static, all the time” channel.
Greg, I’m sorry. You are a weak link in the acting ability chain.
Ahh… the old “I just saw something! Were you recording? Let’s look at the tape now to see what I saw!” routine. I shit you not, I believe this was in one of the most recent reviews that I’ve done. Recent. That’s a relative term.
Got a fully stocked grocery store… so straight to the vodka.
Rushing around trying to fill a cart…
Someone heard something. I didn’t hear shit. So they run away back out to the car, and now there’s a dozen zombies. 40 meters away.
Yeah, you’re short of bullets, so let’s take some shots!
How did that one get behind you?
How did neither of you two do anything for the 8 seconds Greg aimed for?
Driving away, looking up a nose…
Day 3. The Survivors.
Camera is all wonky, a couple of (my plant just dripped a drop of water onto me. This feels good to my soul, like the ladybug in the desert.) I think different people are now aggressively shooting zombies that pose little threat to them…
It’s raining.
Can’t burn bodies in the rain.
They have some strange “keep safe from infection” methods. Moon-walking on dishsoap?
Some… other guy is talking to the camera now? About wasting his life writing his dissertation.
Just compared himself to someone in the Twin Towers.
Some sort of romantic dinner? Ish? Candlit and hushed.
These guys are all jerks.
Out burning the bodies.
Gotta use that night-vision!
Now we’re running and screaming again.
And shooting randomly into a crowd of very slowly incoming zombies.
A… Van? I love vans. But?
Now they’re searching something. There’s a bird. I don’t think they were looking for a bird.
Now we’re back out with the body-burning brigade.
Now we’re fighting about the water in the cow-pit.
They’re all yelling at each other now again.
The van has red on it and she’s pissed off.
Watertower? Pens full of dogs? This shit is getting surreal.
Yankees Suck.
It’s just a bunch of shots of people walking around the farm, talking, holding buckets.
Some sort of mission out to the road. Is this that Greg guy? Yeah. It is.
Greg just got his face bitten off.
Or, rather, shoulder. “Proper medical attention?” There is no such thing.
You have the bitten guy in the car? DOUBLE TAP.
And now you’re overlanding? In a Prius?
Oh. We’ve crashed. Seems to be a popular plot device.
Oh. Fuck. So. One of the most… striking? Hard-hitting? Realistic? depictions of humans. They crash the car. Two get out, but one is unconscious in the car. They abandon her to the oncoming zombies (although, these zombies are so slow they could not actually be a threat) but then stand by and watch until the zombies are ripping out and consuming her intestines. We don’t help. We don’t use the time bought wisely. We just gape.
Why are you taking directions from the guy who got bit?
Oh… Well… So, Greg is realizing he’s at the end of the line.
“Well, we’re not giving up yet.”
“I already have.” I mean, he HAS been bit.
Greg seems to have forgotten everything about gun safety. Like, don’t carry it around pointed at your own face.
I think Greg just died.
So we pick his pocket. Oh. A photo. Stained in blood. So we put it back?
I think that rifle is actually a pellet gun. A very high pellet gun.
Back to running through the woods. This is the only guy, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the original camera man, so why the fuck is he still filming everything? And why in the dark? Where the hell is the electricity for all this shit coming from?
A leather jacket hanging from a tree? No, that’s a cross. A poorly tied together cross. He appears to be in a field of them.
Oh! And a zombie is there too!
Lotta yelling and camera glitches and… well, he done got bit.
Zombie lady still chasing him.
Dropped the camera, but stopped to pick it up again?
Is that thunder or gunshots?
He’s back at the farm? I think? And it looks like a shooting party is clearing a field of zombies?
So… he sticks his arms out and stagger-runs, laughing, towards them.
And one of them understandably takes the shot.
Camera back on the ground again.
Did the camera just get shot?
Who are these people? What the fuck is going on?
Are we, like, being shown the stuff that happened in between the earlier “plot” segments?
Is this retrospective?
A dude tied down on the bed. Looks bad. You can see he’s turning.
Now they’re… going back out to check the area? That they already checked?
Something about barns and dead animals and zombie migration. Are the zombies blind?
There’s a naked woman chained to the wall? The implications…
What the hell is going on?
Back to screaming at each other.
A couple dead people- shot… did she think they were zombies?
That little girl… Well acted. Jesus, what an experience. Not a great movie to be in, but still… that was cool.
Fuck, back to running and shouting in the dark with night-sight.
I think one of their own is walking around killing them?
This has really gone south.
Lotta pleading, then a gun-shot.
A van.
More gunshots.
Zombies shuffling out of the dark to finish off the wounded cameraman…
Now we’re… one month earlier? Need a fucking time machine to follow this shit.
So this is where we meet a couple of the other people?
Offer of cigarettes? Too many questions.
You don’t have a compass? Who the fuck needs one? Look UP.
A campfire conversation about… who the fuck knows?
Um… So, I’m pretty sure they’re part of the group later and even one of the bad guys?
It’s day and we’re looking for Leanne.
Gunshots…
Why do you keep including the camera in everything?
What the fuck? One of the new guys is torturing a zombie, which evidently feels pain? Cutting off it’s fingers? And then peeing on it? People are fucked.
And that’s how the bad guys got the camera.
And I’m gonna leave it alone, but there’s a lot of “the evil that men do” and it’s pretty graphic.
Back to the original soldiers clearing the farm…
Looks like they found the survivor?
And that’s the ending? Seriously? Fail.
————End Transmission——————–
Plot Autopsy
Plot Autopsy
- There’s a camera crew going to interview a farmer, but they just yell at each other.
- They can’t find anyone, so they yell at each other and head back to the farm.
- The zombies show up, so there’s more screaming and running and bungee camera
- Uh… other zombies show up, so there’s more running and screaming and bungee camera
- Look. People are evil, ok? And lazy. So lazy that they rely on bungee camera to make up for no script.
Zombie Description
Zombie Description
It’s a virus. People get sick and die of it, then it’s assumed they get back up and wander around. They move, like, turtle slow. If we were in the midst of this kind of zombie apocalypse, I’d feel fine sending my child to school on her scooter, she’ll be able to outrun them. At one point, it’s even insinuated that the zombies are blind? I mean, as zombies go, the make up and everything was perfect. Except, they moved so fucking slow that there really wasn’t any fear of getting grabbed unless you stood perfectly still. The zombies might still have feelings, because one gets his fingers cut off and seems to feel pain. But then others get shot and don’t even grunt. The zombies in this were great, but they were almost afterthoughts or plot devices. This really wasn’t about zombies.
Where the money went
Where the money went
So, to begin with, I don’t think there was much money. Greg the actor is proof that they really couldn’t pay much more than the exposure of being a part of the project. That said, they used minimal sets, tried and true genre-stones, and made the zombies look fucking great. But then they held off on using them, preferring to bungee the camera around in the dark while shrieking. This is an obvious DIY amateur piece, but there is a lot of promise. Especially for whoever did the zombies and special effects. (yes, they were modest, but knowing your limitations is part of mastery)
Best Weapon
Best Weapon
There really was no innovation in this. There were no good weapons in this. There really wasn’t much in this. I’d say the best weapon, as in, the object that caused the most distress, is the English accents. And how they name things. Listening to them talk about the countryside is like listening to Jamaican patois. I couldn’t understand a damn thing.
That was new!
That was new!
As I’ve already said, this didn’t have shit new to it. It’s a bunch of other ideas cut up, presented occasionally in night vision, and then hastily pasted together with Blair Witch screaming running crying freakouts every 10 minutes. I do remember something sort of at the beginning, where I thought something was interesting, but I can’t remember it now, so that’s pretty telling. I think the most original scene here is the unconscious person being abandoned in the car, but then the camera man sticks around to watch.
Can I get a hand?
Can I get a hand?
There was nothing. Everything that was done has already been done, but there was no acknowledgement. It was as if the filmmakers wanted us to pretend that the movie was occurring in a world where no zombie movies ever existed. Nothing the people did made sense. Nothing the zombies did made sense. Random shit just was random and then people ran through the dark screaming and spinning the camera in circles. Look, I know this has nothing to do with my love of zombies breaching through the crust, but I’m indignant that they felt entitled to waste my time with something that’s been done a thousand times already.
Overall Recommendation
Recommendation?
This should have been a short. I mean, I wouldn’t have watched it, since I don’t like them, but it has exactly the right amount of awesome content to make into a “proof of concept” that the two ding dong directors could have then leveraged for more funding, with which would come a script supervisor, who would have said things like “We cannot have 6 different Blair-Witch-ish running and screaming in the woods scenes” or “We really shouldn’t try to stretch this short- because that’s what it really is- into a full feature.” As a movie? This sucks. The ratio of boring to zombie is whack, the “evil that men do” is gratuitous, the script is completely incoherent. You’d need a Tardis and a map of England to understand this one. It’s a shitty movie. But then there are great moments, usually the ones including the zombies- that were awesome! The zombies were great! The special effects, while limited, were good. The acting… Well, you take what you can get, I guess, but the script… sucked. I have this to say. IF they had ended the movie with the wounded camera-man lying helpless on the ground as the zombies come into frame, the movie would have been a whole lot better. That façade-ending though, with… well, shit- here’s the trigger warning- things get a little rapey when it’s not called for. Have the two directors been working on this project together since the 6th grade? I watched this tv show once about a fellow who, as a publicity stunt, “bought” a one-million dollar diamond, then swallowed it, walked around for a day… feeling like a million bucks… and then passed it, upon where it was carefully washed and returned to the shop. I don’t know if I’d pay more or less for a diamond knowing it went through someone. I guess the Who plays a significant factor. (Baba?) But anyway, that man’s poo is sort of like a great example of this movie. There are little fragments of diamond here in the shit. Excuse me. What I meant to say was “There are little fragments of diamond here in this incomprehensible and utterly rudderless piece of shit.”