Despite all the negative reviews I read about this film, I will be the first to say that yes this film does have it flaws, but it's not as bad as people are making it out to be.  Severed: Forest of the Dead is a zombie film that does follows the modern day zombie formula typical to the likes of the Dawn of the Dead remake, than the original Romero zombies.

    The film takes place in a remote forest somewhere in the northwestern part of the United States. (I believe it was Washington State, but don't quote me on it.) A national logging company has been experimenting with different kind of genetic experimentation on trees to try to increase business in the logging industry. There are a few different groups that work on the site, And a group of wandering protesters who are camping out in the forest and are trying to stop and destroy the company from destroying the many trees in the forest. When a logger attempts to cut down one of the trees that is being experimented with.  The sap from the tree gets into his wounds when an  logging accident occurs.  The sap in turn infects him ala 28 Days Later and he turns into a flesh eating zombie. Days later half the lumberjacks and protesters are now zombies, with a handful hiding out in the forest trying to survive. The president of the company send his son to the area to see why production has stopped and that's when the secrets of the company are revealed and the carnage begins.

   There are a few problems with the script that I'm well aware of.  The story and the film itself could of been cut a lot shorter.  What the filmmakers did wrong was they tried to explain the story to us, yet as an audience it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on. The movie also jumped around to many different locations and it seemed each location turned the plot onto a whole other story.  New characters were introduced throughout the film and just when you started to get to know them, Bam! They were dead.  However despite the lengthily time this film took to explain itself, I did notice that film was trying to be faithful to that of Romeo's films.  First off we're introduced to the scenario of everyone being trapped inside a makeshift hut in the middle of the woods, the scene is similar to that of the clan from Night of the Living Dead being stuck in the house, the group also is very similar to the one in Night as well. However the film does not sacrum to just this location and our crew does escape into the forest to hop back and forth to a few other locations, such as the logging mill, and certain parts of the forest, before driving and hiking a few miles north of their camp to another logging camp, where things start to get like Day of the Dead. However it's more like the original long lost part of the script to Romero's Day of the Dead, where Romero wanted the camp to not only exist underground but above ground as well. Not to get off the subject. But Due to budget cuts in Day of the Dead these scenes were never films, thus forcing Romeo to keep Day in an underground location. With this film, it the opposite. And instead of crazy solders, we get a bunch of crazy loggers. The film is very similar to Day also when it comes to the end of the film as well. 

   The acting in the film is alright, Nothing really worth mentioning. It was just ok.  What really helped me get though this film more than anything was the overall great sense of production value and the array of great gore and special make-up effects. In a way that is what makes this film somewhat of a decent movie. The pacing is a bit off, but overall its not boring like some of those other direct to DVD films.

   Overall, Severed: Forest of the Dead is an alright zombie flick, and well worth the watch is you have a lot of time to kill and your into zombie flicks. It's nothing special, but the make-up effects are what will get you though this film without shutting it off. So overall it's just an alright film. Nothing more, nothing less.

- Horror Bob

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