THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A father, forced into a camping trip with his daughter in order to spend more time with her, finds the normal outside activities turn into a desperate struggle to survive when blood-crazed Zombies show up. The daughter escapes into the hills but the man does not, leaving the two separated and alone. The man must fight his way through the angry horde and reach his daughter before things get worse.

MY VERDICT:

If you want some high-action, Zombie-bashing fun, with only very minor character development and next to no story, The Clearing is for you. There isn't much more to it than that; the action starts almost immediately which is a quality decision because, while the footage does jump back in time to before the Zombie outbreak started to build up what little story surrounds this movie, this 'introduction' would become boring if continued for too long. One really amazing feature that comes from this 'flashback' system is a sense of apprehension and dread - you know what is going to happen and when you see the campers who were seen before as Zombies, your mind starts to race with devilish possibilities. One word of warning though for when they do turn; the action is primarily focused on hand-to-hand combat with the living dead which definitely burns into the realms of unbelievability - I don't think anyone would actually want to punch a Zombie with their bare hands, nor could they keep up the brutal fisticuffs with such force for as long as depicted. You see, the main character simply does not act like you would expect a regular cowardly human to do at the sight of hundreds of terrible screeching dead people sprinting towards his RV - maybe he has a military background but the film never mentions this, it does hint at him being a scout before but that would not prepare him for the end of the world. The sprinting undead are fairly convincing too, being appropriately 'bloody' with above average costume design, charging without care and coming in waves, rather than suddenly appearing, all at once. However, there is a glaring downside to this otherwise enjoyable film that stops it reaching the higher echelons of stardom: the ending. As stated earlier, there is next to no story and I'm okay with that but the ending offers absolutely nothing in the way of explanation of the events which just happened nor does it hint at a possible sequel or really form a satisfying conclusion at all; why are the Zombies here, what caused the outbreak, is the whole world infected - none of these questions are answered. Additionally, for a movie that excels on showing detailed, brutal close-combat action, switching to night-shots in the poorly lit exterior is a very bad decision resulting in most of the final 'coolness' being masked by darkness.