Flights of fancy

I ordered this movie from Amazon earlier in the week and is arrived Friday. I thought I was going to have to send it back because it had come off the holder and was rattling around inside the case. I figured it would be scratched beyond use. Thankfully it played just fine.

I’m not much of a horror movie person. I admit to getting the movie for one main reason and one, slightly less important, reason. Main reason: Ed Quinn. Adore him 🙂 He is one of the few actors that I follow on Twitter to interact directly with his fans, which includes me sometimes. Other times, it’s Val (@walelia). Her and I (real life friends) usually end up giggling and laughing insanely via messenger because his Tweets are funny, charming, and sometimes unexpected.

The less important reason: Zombies. Love Zombie stuff. Need to catch up on Walking Dead still! Best Zombie book I’ve ever read was The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks. Hysterical because it is written so very seriously.

Okay, so enough of why I bought, on to what I thought of it.

I knew what I was in for. It was horror. Even though the tagline says “All Guts”, there was plenty of blood and body parts to go with them.

The storyline has our heroine, Alex ‘Nightingale’ Morgan (the lovely Emmanuelle Vaugier), and Hero, Steven Ellis (Ed), headed to the latest zombie plague outbreak site, a college campus. Morgan and Ellis are medical researchers with the government who are trying to stop the plague. Ellis lost his brother a week prior to the plague so he’s got a personal reason to want to kick some zombie ass. They are looking for the source of it, a first generation zombie who contracted the disease without being bitten. It’s believed the blood from one of them can be used to find a cure. Moragn and Ellis’ time is limited. The campus is scheduled to be destroyed within hours. With the help of a special forces team, they have to infiltrate the campus, find survivors, get zombie blood samples, and get out before the deadline. The special forces team slowly gets picked off by the zombie hordes, including the very cool Victoria Pratt’s character, Henson. She is one of the few actress from my previous life in fandom that I did not get to meet. Such the shame!

I won’t give away the ending in case anyone decides to rent/buy it. It wasn’t what I expected but then had I given it a bit more thought, I wouldn’t have expected the ending I did 🙂

Both Emmanuelle and Victoria did a great job. They had just the right amount of feminism mixed into their badassery.  Beautiful and tough at the same time.

Ed was awesome and looked great, too, even covered in zombie blood and guts. Ellis had his moments of vulnerability that could have come off as too too much or too little but didn’t. Ed gave Ellis a cocky sense of humor but not to the point of being obnoxious. I have a text notification for my phone now that says “Sweetheart, I could kiss you right now.” Makes me giggle every time I hear it. Ellis actually said to one of the female zombies. But with good reason, which I won’t share so I don’t totally spoil things.

Cinematically, I noticed a few bad cuts and some continuity issues. Nothing that would make be chuck the movie out the window though. A bit too much gore for me, otherwise good effects, lighting, sound and direction. The idea of evolving zombies was good. It’s not something generally associated with the standard zombie. These started to grow different teeth to bite through the body armor. They didn’t all just lumber along any more. They started being able to run. Great concept!

On a not to be taken too seriously note: Plenty of T&A for the fellas, even though some of it was zombie T&A, which is just… ewwwww! How about some reciprocal scenes for the ladies? All we got was a bit of Ed’s chest while cleaning up after the first blood splat. A little wider of an angle, with the shot lingering there just a bit would have been lovely 😉 This is actually the first scene I noticed some editing/continuity issues. Does that mean I was watching it too closely?? In defense of the production team, I can see two reasons why there wasn’t more more us ladies:

1) Male zombie chests…. ewwwww!

2) Our heroes are fighting zombies. Taking off the body armor while doing so… probably not the brightest idea

All in all, a good movie, true to its genre. Worthy of a rental or spending $10 at Amazon to have for repeated viewings.