THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

Civilization is recovering from a deadly Zombie outbreak that decimated the population - packs of undead still roam the land but the immediate danger is subsiding. A teenage girl, for unknown reasons, has run away from her sleepy hometown, perhaps trapped by a roaming horde of undead after a night in the city. Searching endlessly for his wayward daughter, Wade Vogel, eventually finds her in a hospital, suffering from an infectious Zombie bite to which there is no cure. She is allowed to return to the family home under her father's supervision. Agonisingly slowly, she begins her transformation into the walking dead, her father struggling to bare the emotional weight of her imminent demise.

MY VERDICT:

It's finally in the UK - the Arnold Schwarzenegger Zombie movie! While the appearance of an actor famed for big muscles and even bigger (if that is possible) explosions may immediately make you think of massive action, a multitude of bullets and shoddy one-liners, you'd be wrong - this is a very strange and very dark Zombie film indeed. It's all about the girl, her relationship to her father and also the "treatment" of the infected, the unfortunate folk who have been bitten by a Zombie but not yet turned. It reminded me quite a lot of BAFTA-winning BBC series In The Flesh yet much more focused on decline rather than rebirth - you get the feeling that humanity is fighting a losing battle, struggling on with faint hope at the end of the tunnel but ultimately doomed to failure. This "bleakness" hurts the entertainment value of the film - from the start, it is downhill. That does not mean it is a bad movie; as a slightly unusual take on the run-of-the-mill Zombie apocalypse concept, it is definitely a welcome highlight. I have also heard that people did not like the action-famed Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the father struggling to cope with the time-bomb of his bitten daughter's fate. I agree in parts; his acting can seem a bit wooden when emotional breakdowns are required. This was the main pull for me though - it felt so average, so real, like this happened to a random Dad who is simply trying to rebuild a fractured life.