If I have said it once, I will say it again: Just like Vampires films, Zombie films are a dime a dozen. So in the words of Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) from THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR; “Here we go again”!
Originally titled “VIRUS UNDEAD,” the distributors of this film came up with a more generic and frequently used title of “BEAST WITHIN”. Briefly, all you really have to do is think NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, meets 28 DAYS LATER meets THE BIRDS meets OUTBREAK meets just about every other zombie film you can name.
Seriously, the film is about a medical student, Robert, invites a bunch of his friends to his grandfather’s medieval mansion to drink and do what college kids do to get themselves killed in a horror film. So while they are all living it up, a guy comes stumbling out of the woods infected with some kind of bird flu virus and ruins everyone’s good time. Next thing you know, everyone is turning into flesh-eating zombies, bird are attacking people and the Night of the Living Dead trapped in a house (or in this case mansion) plot begins.
I know it is hard to come up with an original concept to make a great zombie film. It seems that every idea that surrounds the sub-genre has been done to death. However, that does not excuse a film from having a script that drags the viewer like a dead body across the floor. The script for this film is boring for about forty-five minutes until the real action begins. The characters are not written well at all and are so underdeveloped I did not even catch their names yet alone relate to them. The pacing of the story is all over the place. There is not one definitive scene that makes sense. The film became a series of shots that just kept playing into one another and never really stopped to explain its actions or what was really going on. It was simply just a mess of a script that played off more like a silent action film than anything.
Pretty much, the only good thing that this film has going for it was its acting, which, surprisingly enough is not half bad. The production values have a lot of issues, but I did like the overall feel of the set design inside the mansion. However, the make-up effects look bad, almost as if they were bought right from a Halloween shop. You could blame the lighting as well, which really exposed the details in the effects and made them look fake. I also thought the sound design was mixed lousily. The ADR was off in certain scenes and you could easily tell that the actor’s lines are dubbed in.
There was a lot of money that went into this film. It was shot on Super 35mm film, which is so damned expensive that I know that the filmmakers easily spent over thirty thousand U.S. dollars on film and processing alone. This was a film that easily could have been made better had it been shot on HD and put the rest of its budget into effects. But instead, they opted for the better look of film and in turn, ended up with a film that has a low budget feel. If you like zombie movies and do not mind them being like all the other zombie films out there, then go ahead and pick this one up. If you’re like me and are sick and tired of the same cliché zombie flicks then do yourself a favor and skip this one.
– Horror Bob
- 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
