THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A local Zombie outbreak has occurred on an isolated farm. An emotionally-troubled couple and three friends hold up in their farmhouse and try to survive in this one-shot, point-of-view Zombie film.

MY VERDICT:

Eyes of the Dead is a very average Zombie film with its core party trick of showing all the action through the eyes of the main character being a welcome new slant on the generic 'house under siege' movie but, ultimately, it is just not enough to carry this low-budget film into greatness. I do like the very minimal story 'coating' the action and the rise of the undead though, which, by the way, is mentioned as just a local outbreak which no one official really cares that much about - explaining the very small number of Zombies in this film and the clear lack of any substantial government response. I also really enjoyed the ending of the film where the main character gets bitten and eventually turns into a Zombie, which of course means you get to see events through their eyes as they attack once friendly survivors - a very cool and innovative idea. However, this section does highlight the obvious problem of fast-moving Zombies, hunting survivors in a tight space; there are clear points where, to draw out the length of the film, the Zombified main character has to hesitate, has to hold back from an attack or miss a grab purposefully. This just reminds you that you are watching through the eyes of a human actor pretending to be a Zombie and not an actual Zombie - understandable but disastrous to such a key highlight of the movie. The Zombie make-up is a bit disappointing too - you do not see many of them up close but, excluding the main character Zombie who sees himself in a mirror (and is humorously confused by it), most of the Zombies seem to be just people with blood on them. The acting in the movie is poor. The worst failure though is the sound recording; it is incredibly hard to hear what the actors are saying, with turning the volume up only making the screams when the Zombies attack way too loud. Fortunately, the dialogue is not important to the movie; you can understand the bleak situation the survivors find themselves in without knowing exactly what they are saying to each other.