For the past few years the zombie film has quickly crept into the genre and taken over. You can even now consider it it’s own sub-genre right next to the vampire and ghost films. However I find that no matter how many different twist and turns you try to put on the zombies themselves., rather their the fast paced running zombies that the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Day Later gave us, or the slow movie zombies that Romero created. The independent zombie films that are being pumped out like our natural resources all seem to have the same premise. Some work and are really good films, while other lack in more ways than one.
Automation Transfusion, (One of the most worst titles I have ever heard for a film). is about a group of teenagers whom fight off an army experiment gone bad, where, guess what? Dead bodies came back to life and want to eat the living. The film jumps around from various teenagers running around in a town full of zombies, trying to survive the onslaught.
Honestly folks, this film plays off the likes of every zombie flick that came before it. Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, 28 Days Later and any other throwback zombie flick from the past forty years.
Here’s the deal, the script has a plot that really goes nowhere. For the most part we get the hint right away about where this story is headed. It’s full of just one kill scene after another and does nothing to help the story move along. I almost felt as if this script was written as a compilation of the many different ways to die from a zombie invasion. Like I mentioned above many of the scene look familiar to that of zombie films from the past. The character development is not all that great, I didn’t have any kind of relation to any of the characters as they were all extremely underdeveloped. The dialogue however I must admit was pretty decent.
To say the acting in this film is bad would not be the right thing to say. While some of it was bad, there were actually a few performances that were very good considering that this was a film filled with a bunch of no name actors. The problem is the script didn’t give them that one extra thing they needed to be great. But still they should give themselves a pat on the back for doing a decent job with a script that was all over the place.
The production value for Automation Transfusion is actually not half bad considering the films thirty thousand dollar budget. The producers where able to make the best of the locations they used. Even the sets were dressed very well and looked believable. For gore hounds and people who just can’t get enough of blood and guts, this film has so much of it, that I think the majority of the movies budget when towards the effects. We get everything from a fetus being ripped out of a women’s stomach to a girl getting her jaw ripped off. In theory it’s not practical for such a thing to happen, but this was the directors vision, just fill the movie with more gore an anyone can handle and not worry so much about a storyline.
Overall, I was hoping that Automation transfusion would be the next great indie zombie film on the block. I must respectfully disagree with the many who claimed it to be so. The film does not even have a conclusion, as Automation Transfusion is actually the first film in a new zombie trilogy. But this movie will likely cater more to fans who just love their blood and gore, but people like me who need a real story behind their gore will be disappointed.
– 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
