Before Dawn (UK/2012)

Drama and zombies meet in this 2012 directing debute from Dominic Brunt who also takes one of the lead roles as Alex.
The combination of drama and horror does work, but it kind of takes the pace out of the movie in the beginning. It takes a good while before the action really starts, but when it does it does it with style.

To sum up the story in short:

Alex and Meg go on a holiday to the country side to safe their troubled marriage.

Meg goes out for a run after another fallout with her husband and when she’s attacked by a "rabid" man, things turn ugly.

Alex has to use everything in his powers to fight of the zombies and after his wife turns he has even bigger things to worry about.

It's all put together pretty well. The acting is quite good, well filmed, great exciting action, the zombies look sick and there's a decent amount of blood. The suspence factor is quite high in this movie and that's just what alot of this genre is missing at the moment. The dvd extra's like "the making of" is very interesting and enjoyed watching it. It seems like the entire crew was casted as a zombie for the end of the movie.

Good effort, but could have done with a bit more zombie action in my opinion cause that was great executed imo, but that could be me just not being too much into drama.

BBQ's score

Director: Dominic Brunt

Cast: Dominic Brunt, Joanne Mitchell and Nicky Evans

Running Time : aprox. 82 minutes

 

 

A Cadaver Christmas aka Zombies At Christmas (USA/2011)

A bit too late, or well in time for Christmas...you decide.

Came across this 2011 movie on ebay and thought what the hell, lets order it cause it looked fun.

At Christmas, a university professor's experiment, once again goes wrong and it's up to the janitor to clean up the mess.
With the help of a local drunk, a barkeeper, a fired cop and the town's perv, they go up to the university to get rid of the undead before the automatic doors open at dawn.

It's a hit and miss with this movie. Some parts are done pretty well and remind me of Braindead and Re-Animator and some parts just seem rushed a bit. The zombie slaying could have been more fun if they used a more slapstick aproach in my opinion. Sometimes it's just not convincing enough while at other times the effects of blowing a zombies brain out does look cool.
It could have used a bit more gore, although the Janitor's face is covered with it the whole movie through

The unlikely band of heroes are a fun bunch to watch and make most of this comedy/"horror" worth to watch. And the wide range of weapons used to kill are original.

The zombies don't look too spectacular, but that didn't bother me too much. I generally enjoyed myself watching this movie.


Director: Joe Zerull
Cast:   Daniel Rairdin-Hale, Hanlon Smith-Dorsey, Yosh Hayashi
Running time: aprox 85 minutes

BBQ's Score:

Trailer: