Blood Quantum Review

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: Jeff Barnaby

Starring: Forrest Goodluck, Michael Greyeyes, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Kiowa Gordon, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs & Stonehorse Lone Goeman

Shudder Original – April 23, 2020

Set on the Miꞌkmaq Red Crow Reservation in 1981, a mysterious virus is reanimating dead salmon in the communal waterways. Within the first hours of this discovery, the outbreak quickly spreads to the surrounding human population. Ravenous infected quickly and violently attack and consume anyone they can get to, rapidly spreading the infection.

A title card flashes us forward six months to the new reality. It turns out, the Indigenous Miꞌkmaq appear to be the only known immune population. They have make-shifted a camp, offering refuge for the survivors and a quick disposal for the remaining infected. But as we soon find out, not everyone is so ready to welcome in a vulnerable population of colonizers. As the community tears apart over their differences, Joseph (Goodluck) tries to keep his pregnant girlfriend and their unborn baby safe from both sides.

It’s been pontificated that Nazis and Zombies are the two groups that any filmmaker could kill with impunity. If you just want to compose a fun ninety minutes of cool death scenes, add a horde of either and no one will bat an eye. Nobody will complain about gratuitous violence or that the villains weren’t given enough complexities or inner struggles. Parts of this film feel just that skin deep. I have no grievance with this, mind you. The practical effects were very well done and I’ll bet this was a fun set to be on.

On the other hand, the great genre filmmakers have always been able to use the threat of a mindless mass as a metaphor to invoke provocative social commentary. Romero’s films did this always and to great effect. It’s in this way that BLOOD QUANTUM shines as something more special than most films of the same ilk. The role reversal of the ‘haves’ & the ‘have-nots’ gives us a familiar world in which those with resources still fight amongst themselves about how best to keep their community safe.  Of course, this is Canada. And their refugee policy during a zombie outbreak is still more compassionate than anything we’ve seen in the U.S. under our current administration.

While this film does a good job at reflecting on this continent’s dark history of colonialism

and immigration, I think that it did an even better job encapsulating something far more pressing. I couldn’t help but be reminded of mankind’s tendency to look out for only ourselves in a time of crisis. To be fair, in our current state of affairs, this isn’t something that we need to be reminded of. I think of it every time I go out looking for toilet paper. Or when I see the lines of people wrapped around the ammunition store I drive by on my way home. Or when I see footage of the crowds breaking quarantine to gather in places like Lansing, Denver and Phoenix. A time of crisis is when a community is at its most vulnerable. It’s at times like this that small minorities of that community can inflict irreparable damage on us all. It’s in this way that I think Barnaby’s second feature, if even unwittingly, hits the chainsaw on the head.

By and large, the technical aspects here are mostly well done. The film was shot very well. It can be complicated shooting a lot of zombie siege fight sequences in a way that the audience can actually comprehend what’s going on. This film looked far better than anything in the final season of “Game of Thrones”. The acting was a bit of a mixed bag but I would give additional kudos to Stonehorse Lone Goeman. He doesn’t have much experience as an actor but is rather well known as a trainer MMA world. Here he plays sort of a First Nations Samurai Grandpa character that’s a delight whenever he’s on screen. I would also highlight the ultra-hip animated sequences that pop up throughout the film. I don’t really know anything about animation but it looked really cool.

I think the story falters a bit in its pacing and tonal shifts. At times it seems like it’s trying to have a little too much fun with the “zed” murdering badassery to be taken seriously as a social commentary. Most of this is easily forgivable but from time to time, it’s unclear where the film’s heart it.

My biggest, and only true gripe was with the underdevelopment of its characters and relationships. Sometimes it’s the tendency of a storyteller aiming at a universal truth to give less time for the details that flesh out the finer points. It’s hard to understand that specificity allows greater empathy and identification but I’ve found this to always be the case. Our main characters give lip service to their back stories but a few flashback scenes would have gone a long way for the audience. This was a bit extra disappointing considering the fact that Barnaby’s first feature, RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS didn’t suffer from this issue at all.

This is Barnaby’s second feature. The aforementioned RHYMES FOR YOUNG GHOULS is a better film that I’ve grown to love a little bit more with every additional viewing. It takes place in the same area about a decade earlier than BLOOD QUANTUM. And although it’s an imperfect film, it succeeded in many ways. And I’m very excited to see what he comes up with next.

Emery’s Rating

3.5 out of 5 Stars

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Zombieland: Double Tap Review

Zombieland: Double Tap

Dir: Ruben Fleischer

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Zooey Deutch

It’s been a decade since “Zombieland” brought a humorous and horror-filled spin to the living dead mythology, crafting a film that would become a shining moment for the overabundant zombie subgenre of horror.

The film introduced a group of rag-tag survivors living in an apocalyptic world who form a makeshift family while battling hordes of zombies roaming throughout the U.S. Led by Tallahassee, a fantastic Woody Harrelson hamming it up with glee, and assisted by Emma Stone, Jesse Eisenberg, and Abigail Breslin, each with a city-specific name, “Zombieland” had enough gore, enough good laughs, and more than enough fun to execute a horror-comedy effectively.

It’s amazing that in today’s oversaturated, sequel-ready film world that “Zombieland: Double Tap” would take a decade to come to life. While it’s been 10 years in real life, with an Oscar win for Ms. Stone and some performance nominations for Harrelson and Eisenberg, the film doesn’t skip a beat in stepping right back into the zombie world with all the major players returning including some new friends tagging along for the fun.

Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) are looking for a place to call home, after battling a group of zombies with all manner of weaponry they lay claim to an abandoned White House. While Columbus and Wichita work on their blossoming romantic relationship and Tallahassee seems content making modifications on his vehicle, Little Rock is having growing pains coming to terms with life in Zombieland.

“Zombieland: Double Tap” is trying to check all the boxes that helped turn the first film into a cult classic. While trying to bring the fun horror moments, which it does with slow-motion living dead carnage and improved super zombies with a particularly clever name, along with heaping amounts of humor, mostly bragging banter from Woody Harrelson and the scene-stealing role of Zooey Deutch playing a dimwitted survivor named Madison, this sequel does a good job of focusing on having as much fun as it possibly can.

While it does a good job of distracting for a quick 99-minute run time, the film lacks any cohesive sense of narrative direction; where the first film focused on the group dynamic and how one would survive in a world filled with flesh-eating zombies, this film becomes a road trip film that never really knows where it’s going. Even when it arrives at its eventual destination in the final act, the film doesn’t know how it got there or what to do to wrap everything up. Part of this is because of the lack of chemistry written for the characters and also because the film never seems to aim for these specific narrative results, this sequel feels wholly content trying to recreate everything that made fans love the original. While it entertains just enough, it doesn’t have the same memorable quality of the original film.

“Zombieland: Double Tap” may not have much direction but it brings back all the familiar humor and horror that made the original film such a hit. It also makes sure to add some welcome characters, like Rosario Dawson playing an Elvis loving fangirl named Nevada, and fresh gags, like a funny look at zombie deaths from around the world, to make it feel new even though it doesn’t really do anything new at all. 

Monte’s Rating

2.75 out of 5.00

2019 PFF & IHSFF Festival Recap – ONE CUT OF THE DEAD

2019 PFF & IHSFF Festival Recap – ONE CUT OF THE DEAD

Coda’s ongoing coverage of the 2019 Phoenix Film Festival & International Horror Sci-Fi Film Festival. I'll be using these posts to recap the films I've experienced as part of these festivals.

By Emery Snyder @leeroy711

Director: Shin'ichirô Ueda
Starring: Takayuki Hamatsu, Yuzuki Akiyama & Harumi Shuhama

A self-professed "fast, cheap and average" commercial director gets a job directing a live, one-shot zombie film. Things go horribly wrong during the shoot but his dedication to his art shines through. "DON'T STOP SHOOTING"... 

I'm not really sure how much I should say about this film. I was very appreciative of the fact that I went into this knowing very little. The trailer, mercifully gives you very little information and is at least a little bit misleading. In my opinion, this is typically the best way to come into a film. (Yes, I realize the weird dichotomy of a film reviewer telling to watch a film blind.) This is even more true of this one. 

This conundrum of course gives me very little to write about. But I emphatically loved this movie so I have so much to say about it. But if the zombie angle doesn't sound appealing to you, go for the fact that it is a uproarious comedic romp of a dark humor. If a meta 'inside film-making' flick doesn't float your boat, see it for it's heart warming father/daughter story. And if the gimmick and technical mastery of a 40 minute long uncut shot doesn't get you to sit for this, well there's just no pleasing you...

And I think it's this last aspect mentioned that will get me to rewatch this one many times in the coming years. Again, without giving too much away, the long shot is only the beginning of the ingenuity and genius necessary to pull this off in such a widely successful way. I'm not entirely sure how they had enough capacity left over to fit in the amount of gags. 

Luckily, this isn't one of those doomed to be lost in the folds films. AMC's Shudder announced yesterday that they have acquired all of the rights to this film. It will be available to stream later this year. 

ACTION!!!

Emery’s Rating

4.75 out of 5 Stars

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Overlord Review

Overlord

Dir: Julius Avery

Starring: Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier, Pilou Asbaek, and John Magaro

A convoy of American war ships and transport planes are traveling on the sea and through the sky with Germany in its sights. It’s the night before D-Day, a billowing cloud of smoke erupts with explosions that illuminate the sky as combat planes fad into the abyss of artillery clouds. A group of soldiers, fresh out of boot camp, nervously wait for their call to parachute into battle. In a blink, bullets riddle the airplane and chaos overtakes the company. The adrenaline fueled, absolutely terrifying, chaos of war. 

Director Julius Avery and writing team Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith introduce their crossover genre film “Overlord” with an emphasis on real life atrocities and the terror of combat. However, the team also isn’t too concerned with making a full-blown war film but rather focus their attention on crafting a fright fest. “Overlord” utilizes many of the awful aspects of war to make its point about monsters; the captivity, the torture, and the maniacal control make perfect sense when crossing paths with horror.

Boyce (Jovan Adepo) and Ford (Wyatt Russell) are two paratroopers who survive the fall to earth after their plane is destroyed over the combat zone. Their mission is to take down a Nazi controlled radio tower that sits atop a hill outside a nearby village. Boyce, trying to connect with other members of his platoon, gets forced into the radio tower station which is completely occupied by Nazi soldiers. Boyce discovers a laboratory beneath the tower where a scientist is conducting terrifying experiments on locals from the village and captured soldiers. 

“Overlord”, amidst some nasty bits of human experimentation, torture, and assault, is operating to induce the same sensation one might feel while playing an intense round of team deathmatch in a multiplayer first-person video game. And, unfortunately, just like the sporadic and fleeting nature of video game shooters, the thrill is short lived. That’s the major issue with “Overlord”, it seldom commits towards embracing the frenetic and frightening pace it achieves in very small doses, specifically the first and final 15 minutes of the film which are fantastic. It lingers in moments of needless exposition and meaningless side missions, these moments undercut the thrill achieved in the introduction and take away from the building excitement of entering a madhouse of horror. 

However, when the film unleashes into action sequences, with all of its monster mayhem and breakneck brutality, the film is an absolute crowd pleaser. The intensity of the terror, when it pushes into this realm, is such a good time. It feels like your favorite video game with the gun fights, the exploration and finding of clues inside different environments, and the stalking through dingy tunnels and darkened hiding places. While this technique doesn’t allow for the best character development, there are still a few highlighted performances specifically from lead Jovan Adepo who controls the balance of showing humanity versus turning into the monsters he is fighting. Also, Mathilde Ollivier, playing a French freedom fighter, does a nice job wielding a flame thrower and showing the soldiers she can fight just like them.

“Overlord” struggles in finding the path and tone it wants to take, combining the war and horror genre was the best choice here because neither story in this film was strong enough to exist on their own. Still, there are many genre film fans who will find the nearly 2-hour experience entertaining because of its commitment to punishing war violence and gory monsters.

Monte’s Rating 

3.00 out of 5.00

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse Review

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

Dir: Christopher Landon

Starring: Tye Sheridan, Logan Miller, Joey Morgan, Sarah Dumont, Halston Sage, David Koechner, and Cloris Leachman

Zombies are everywhere. With the continued popularity of “The Walking Dead” television show, putting zombies in the living room on a weekly basis, this subgenre of horror is seemingly unstoppable. Thank early creator George A. Romero, director of the definitive zombie films “Night of the Living Dead”, “Dawn of the Dead”, and “Day of the Dead”, for making the lumbering hoards an intimidating and scary threat. However, there is another side to these films, a funnier and humorous side, which provides equal opportunity for a joke as it does for a gory scene. The zombie comedy has been done exceptionally well with films like “Shaun the Dead” and “Zombieland”, but amidst all the living dead saturation in entertainment these films are becoming more of a rehashed annoyance than a welcome indulgence. Though, just when horror fans may be thinking that the zombie comedy has been done to death, a film like “Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” makes a splatter into theaters.

Ben (Tye Sheridan), Carter (Logan Miller), and Augie (Joey Morgan) are the only three members of a sorry excuse for a high school scout troop. Ben and Carter are hoping they will be able to ditch the uniforms after their final camp-out, an event to honor their friend Augie who is receiving a special badge. Ben and Carter are unexpectedly invited to a secret party by some upperclassmen but will need to ditch Augie in order to make the party. What the three boys are unaware of is that their night is about to be interrupted by the zombie apocalypse.

The first few minutes of the film don’t especially help the familiar genre appeal. The introduction is overly predictable, even a bit lackluster, but it establishes a small but visually stimulating reason to stick around…the use of gore. Though the scene is one of small enticement it’s enough to keep you from writing the film off. And still, even after this tedious introduction, the film takes some time before it finally finds its rhythm.

What ultimately gets the film moving is the cast of characters, a relative set of unknown actors with the exception of Tye Sheridan who shined in last years “Mud” and “Joe”. The camaraderie of the teenage boys and the raunchy high school comedy motifs work great throughout; Tye Sheridan has a natural, laid-back quality that makes it easy to connect with his character Ben while Logan Miller provides many of the quick witted one-liners with stinging effect as the sex obsessed Carter. Joey Morgan is also good as Augie; he plays the emotional anchor of the group, dealing with the loss of a family member and, at moments, the loss of his only two friends. Another bright spot is Sarah Dumont who plays a cocktail waitress tagging along with the scouts. Ms. Dumont provides a confident sexuality to the character, one that intimidates the boys but provides her with opportunities to display her tough characteristics.

“Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” is one of the better zombie comedy films this year. While it may not compare exceptionally well to the films that have come before it, for fans of coarse and crude humor and juicy amounts of bursting blood; this will be a film that will surely entertain.

Monte’s Rating

3.00 out of 5.00

Warm Bodies Review

Warm Bodies

Director: Jonathan Levine

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer,

 Rob Corddry, and John Malkovich

Horror fans, we are in the era of making horrible things beautiful.  However, this isn’t the kind of beauty portrayed by the likes of Bram Stoker’s gothic love tale. Warm Bodies is an example of the recent splurge in PG-13 tailored horror films meant to please a specific demographic. That being explained, it doesn’t mean that films that occupy this category can’t do something ingenious, which is what Warm Bodies achieves in some regards.

A zombie epidemic has taken over the world forcing those not infected to retreat beyond self-sustaining cities surrounded by a massive wall. R (Nicholas Hoult), an altogether different kind of zombie, narrates a portion of the film explaining his daily ritual and the ambitions lost from his former “living” life. What motivates R is an unrelenting complaisance to the zombie life until a beautiful woman named Julie (Teresa Palmer) enters his world. R’s decision to save Julie, instead of eating her, is the turning point in his afterlife that brings about an unexpected change.

Jonathan Levine is a talented director and much of what works for Warm Bodies is an express result of his expertise. The film rewrites many of the traditional rules of the zombie mythos while leaving room for familiar, conventional aspects to remain intact. Zombies still have the urge to eat and brains remain their preferred meal. However, brains hold a sort of bliss for the living dead, allowing them to retain the memories of those they consume. Zombies have a greater threshold of communication that is mostly garbled and mumbled grunts, but still a form of interaction reminiscent of Bub in Romero’s Day of the Dead.

Though Levine does well to establish new rules for his zombie ode, he seems to lose focus in the latter half of the film. R is clearly different from the other zombies, but Levine's main focus becomes the development of the character in the realms of love instead of also examining the bigger picture. Levine does utilize comedy and pop culture with capable hands in the form of the budding relationship of R and Julie amidst a clever soundtrack of narrative specific tunes. The horror properties are strictly subdued with minimal amounts of gore and some particularly dreadful CGI zombie skeletons

The performances are a plus with Hoult personifying his zombie with charm, which is a usually compliment for a character that should induce fear, but Hoult pulls it off. Palmer is the standout as Julie, permitting her character intricacies with a blend of toughness and sensitivity. Malkovich is slightly miscast as a controlling father to Julie and renegade leader of the protected city. Though he is menacing, his character arch is apparent from the very beginning.

There aren’t many surprises in Warm Bodies, but Jonathan Levine is a good writer and director, and there are some clever aspects glancing through. Warm Bodies is a difficult execution, and honestly had all signs of being potentially terrible, but Levine’s shrewd eye on character keeps the film floating even when elements of horror are absent.

Monte’s Rating

3.00 out 5.00