THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

An American, awaiting a appendix-removal operation at a hospital in South Africa, finds himself in the midst of a Zombie outbreak. To escape the country he must rely on the help of three strangers.

MY VERDICT:

This movie is South Africa’s version of 28 Days Later, and, rather expectantly, it falls short of Danny Boyle’s British masterpiece. The blatant rip-off of the story is it’s first folly – aside from a few scenes at the start, where our main character waits in hospital for his operation to begin, and a ending without showing any military (though a military convoy is present at one point), everything is pretty much identical, albeit massively reduced in scale; survivor wakes up in the middle of a Zombie outbreak, the town he is in has been evacuated, he meets a woman who he eventually falls in love with and he joins up with two other survivors, desperate to escape this hellish new life. The other major disadvantage of this film is the gross lack of Zombies. Aside from the climax of the film where several marauders are seen running at night, chasing the antagonist, there are approximately less than ten in the entire film making it extremely difficult to believe in the whole urgent danger of the situation. Also, one of the ‘rage-fuelled’, sprinting Zombies is hilariously over-acted – the actor giving it his all for what is clearly his first film but putting abit too much effort into acting dead. The only ‘stand-out’ part of this mediocre film comes in the early section, where the non-likable hero of the story is still drugged from his operation, interrupted in mid-flow by the sudden appearance of Zombies – he cannot move his body and the lights are out but he is still conscious, still able to hear the carnage going on around him, just not see it. It reminds me of the incredibly cool moments in Pontypool where the Zombie apocalypse is never shown but heard and reported on, leaving your mind to fill in the blanks. Last Ones Out’s attempts to recreate this magic is a little clumsy and half-hearted but, it is a good inclusion nonetheless.