Uh…no. Zip, zero, nada.

   Rather than thrust you, ‘into the moment,’ it thrust you into wishing Tony Soprano did movie directors.

   It started out fine: People in a reinforced house, surviving, trying to find, ration, and divide food.

Then the zombies broke in and our heroes were being attacked…or so you had to assume. You couldn’t see anything. The camera was all over the place: A flash of a hand, then the wall, then the ceiling, a neck, an eye, a shirt collar, the wall again, a leg, something else, the floor, a cheek, something else, a finger, something else, an elbow, something else, and so on, and so on, and so on…

   I was starting to get angry.

   Stay calm, I told myself. Don’t fret it. This is just the start. The director is simply trying to catapult me into the scene, shoot me into the immediacy of the story. He’s just showing us panic, chaos, helter-skelter. Sure, Fox News has steadier camera shots in a Baghdad battle, but not to worry. Once we get into the story, they’re going to settle down and let us see the freakin’ movie. There’s no way they would do this to us in every action scene. I mean, after all, why would a director in his right mind…no, he wouldn’t…he couldn’t…

   He did.

   Every filthy zombie attack scene, every damn one, was this joggling, shaking, erratic ‘I’m running and trying to hold the camera at the same time,’ type of shot. It was unbelievable. After a while you got to the point where you just droned, stared, eyes glossing over; like you were watching a three in the morning, off the air TV channel of nothing but static snow.

   But this director didn’t stop there, oh no. In his effort to shove his concept of artistic realism down your already frustrated throat, Fresnadillo also did his night scenes…well, at night–in the dark. No no, I mean really in the dark. I’m talking nighttime. You know, like when you can’t see because it’s in an alley, and the people are just blacker silhouettes against a black building? That kind of dark. I guess he thought, In real life you can’t see when it’s dark, so…I’m going to make it so the audience can’t see…because it’s dark. I’m a genius! Fresnadillo deserves a good, swift kick in the…well, anyway. I only saw this idiotic film a week ago and I honestly don’t remember the ending.

   Oh, the humanity!

   It wasn’t a complete loss, though. For an entire movie, it’s not much, but John Murphy’s soundtrack was wonderful. Toward the end, in the fly over sky shot of the burning city, the music had that eerie, dissonant, almost miss-chorded, disturbing devastation feel of a hopeless wasteland. Mr. Murphy’s music told a better story than Fresnadillo’s filmmaking did.

   Nope. The only way you should see this movie, is if it’s with a free coupon rental from the video store, and they give you popcorn and soda at no charge, along with three passes to your local theatre evening show, tell you where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, and throw in a five thousand dollar gift certificate from Neiman Marcus.  

   There’s a new category of film that a friend of mine came up with. You’ve heard of direct-to-video? Those are movies that are so bad they don’t even see a theatre release. Well he thought of another one: Direct-to-MST. For those of you who don’t know, MST is Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It’s…well, if you don’t know, check it out on the net.

   Oh yes. This is one film that begs for Mike, Crow, and Tom servo to assess its cinematic value.

Rent it if you wish, but get it on DVD. That way, you can slow the action scenes way down in order to see them. Of course, then you’ll be watching 28 hours later.

Oh, the humanity!

 

   Keck