A visceral prologue apes – inevitably – the 28 DAYS/WEEKS LATER movies with its frenetic shaki-cam work, fast-cuts and faster-moving “zombies” : an Iraqi research station where an alien bacterium – discovered to have the ability to revive the dead and possess the living – causes chaos before a Bloody Big Bomb drops on the base. Scientist Eric Peter-Kaiser moves into a creepy basement apartment, the only one to walk away from the Iraqi site and in possession of the last remaining vestige of the extra-terrestrial reanimation serum. Mmm…can you guess what happens next?
With zombies billed as “alien possessed life forms”, this pretty bloody, shot-on-digital flick struggles to distinguish itself from the rash of other undead-loose-in-an-apartment building shockers : see also MULBERRY STREET, REC, LA HORDE, et al. It’s competently directed, with decent make-up FX, but it gets weighed down by an excess of dull and / or annoying supporting characters.
Perhaps its biggest hindrance is the kind of corny romantic sub-plot in which characters forlornly say things to each other like “You really have…(poignant pause)…sad eyes”. Our hero’s love interest is hot, busty divorcee Sandra Ramirez, a hot, busty actress ill-advisedly cast as a dateless TiVo-addicted loner despite the fact that she always has her (spectacular) cleavage on display. Ramirez isn’t the kind of wizened lonely cat-lady you’d find in this kind of low-rent apartment complex ; she looks like the kind of hottie you’d exercise your wrist to while browsing the lingerie section of an up market catalogue.
Ramirez and our one-note hero get it on for a s-l-o-w, flesh-free, passion-less sex scene that slows things down to a crawl, while silly disposable fodder like a paranoid Cockney and a daft bunch of phony white would-be Gangstas just get in the way of the carnage – which, when it happens, is diverting enough.
Screenwriter Brian Patrick O’Toole also wrote the more-fun BASEMENT JACK and CEMETERY GATES ; this shares several cast members with the former (including comic relief Nathan Bexton playing the same apartment-manager role), plus a score by veteran John Carpenter collaborator Alan Howarth.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
