One thing about running Buy Zombie is that the films I watch for the site are all zombie films. When you are talking about zombie films they run the gambit of absolutely fantastic to 100% awful. Horror films specialize in the indie made budget and zombie films trump all other horror sub-genres for being the king of budget films. So with that in mind you have to realize I’m willing to watch and find redeeming qualities of a lot of films out there – even ones that most people would hate. I won’t give a bad film a good review I’m just saying that most of the time I won’t complain ‘too’ much about a bad film. They don’t bother me all that much in general. What really pisses me off i when a film COULD be good and just ends up being a complete and utter train wreck for STUPID reasons.
Zombie Driftwood is one of those films.
Honestly there is NO excuse for how bad this film ended up. The film was directed by Bob Carruthers whose directed quite a few documentaries over his time. Sure documentaries aren’t zombie films but he’s won an Emmy for Christ’s sake. He should know better then some of the mistakes I’ll rant about in a few minutes. It was written by Phil Eckstein. This is only work and I feel kind of bad for him as a lot of it could have been so much more entertaining if it wasn’t for how the film ended up being.
The film itself is a zombie comedy and I’m going to sum up the full description of the plot VERY quickly because honestly I want to start getting to my complaints right off the bat. The film itself involves a couple on vacation visiting their friends in Bermuda. The boyfriend has an ulterior motive to see his favorite band. In the background we find out a cruise ship has gone missing and has landed ashore in the area they are staying with everyone on board missing. They end up as zombies who come up and go on a killing spree where the main couple has to find a way to survive.
See? Simple. Straight forward. Something EASY to work with. You can do a lot with something that vague or very little. The film’s introduction is where we instantly are going to find out a way it goes wrong. First off the main male lead is a super fan of the metal band October File. In fact most of the characters are huge metal fans even if by looking at them or how they act for the majority of the film don’t look or act like metal fans. Hey, that’s cool. I don’t listen to metal as much as I used to but it’s still on my playlists. I’m a horror fanatic so I grew up with it. Awesome. Right? Wrong. Very wrong. The soundtrack doesn’t fit the majority of the scenes it is located in, doesn’t fade in and out properly, will be louder than conversations or background sounds. It just doesn’t fit well which, considering our lead is a huge fan and the point is to see them live, is a gaping flaw.
Let’s say we can ignore the music for a moment shall we? Let’s move onto the special effects. The blood and gore, while clearly lower budget to match the film, actually look pretty good! I was very impressed with it. So how does that go wrong? Well the zombies themselves even looked good so where was the problem there? Oh wait it was with the zombies, but not the look.
There were a lot of liberties taken with the undead in this film. On the one hand we get a semi-Romero styled zombie in the fact that they are attempting to do what they did before they died – such as buy ‘things’ that they’d want and beer. Yes. Buying things. Beer. Ok… Let’s say it stopped there. It could have gone good. they decided though to mix in a nazi Hitler-esque zombie for no apparent reason who was telling zombies to attack the rest of humanity. OK so that’s two types of zombies. Romeroish and semi-intelligent who want to destroy humanity. How about a third set, also intelligent, and just talk in grunts making ‘funny’ comments about eating humans and how the world is going.
If any of these three zombie ‘types’ were the focus of the film it could have worked. The mixing and matching along with the other mistakes? No good!
How about the acting? Well if it wasn’t for the horrible soundtrack the acting could have been passable. There was a scene with a police officer early in the film that was painful to watch, the newscasters and random zombie shots are horrible, the main characters? Not “bad” for an indie film. Not great but some of the characters (specifically the writer at the bar) are actually entertaining.
Overall though I cannot find a way to recommend this film. If you are looking for a metal music video that the video doesn’t usually go along with the music aside from 2 scenes near the end? OK there we go that’s how I can recommend it.
