THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A merciless sickness spreads through a hotel hallway - it's origin unknown. A few survivors try to make it out of the isolated carnage.

MY VERDICT:

Labelling Hall as a 'Zombie' movie might be a misnomer; it has all the hallmarks (totally not sorry about the pun) of a Zombie-fest such as a brutal virus for which there is no cure, giving people sparks of 28 Days Later rage and, later, a apocalypse-warning emergency broadcast system but any living dead action is only hinted at, never directly shown, probably due to the obvious low-budget of the movie. It's a shame as the movie suggests a wider scale, leaving questions hanging, unanswered, ultimately leading to an underwhelming ending - just a convenient place to end rather than a conclusion. This, oddly, is the main pull of the movie in my mind; it's what is unseen that really hooks you in, the questions left open that your mind races to fill. The acting is surprisingly high-quality and believable for a film with such a small plot and very little to draw your eye from any flawed performances. The scenes of people caught by the dreaded plague are quite shocking and realistic too - victims having black exposed veins, breathing problems and limbs that will not function. It feels like those infected, who inevitably perish from their affliction, will eventually re-animate as fully undead, walking horrors but, in a refreshing departure from most Zombie movies, this process takes time - hours, days even, not mere seconds. In general, Hall seems a lot more like a prequel in an already established franchise than a movie in its own right; worth watching to imagine the beginnings of a Zombie outbreak though one lacking in action or carefully laid-out narrative.