Reviewed by Adrian Hieatt
Stars Alastair Kirton, Daisy Aitkens, Kate Alderman, Leanne Pammen, Tat Whalley, Kerry Owen, Leigh Crocombe, Justin Mitchell-Davey, Dan Weekes, Dominic Burgess, Rami Hilmi
Written by Marc Price
Certification UK 18
Runtime 97 minutes
Directed by Marc Price
There's a simple lesson that can be gleaned from watching Colin. It is this: if you're going to make a feature-length film about zombies with your mates and on basically zero budget, it's going to be crap. To be honest, I'm not sure why I expected anything more, but while from the beginning I really wanted to like the movie and I was willing it to be good, I haven't seen such a boring, poorly paced, badly written and unoriginal film in a good long while.
Let's start with the basic premise: zombies. Yes, I know that this is a 'unique' twist on the genre (we follow around a single zombie the whole time, rather than a group of survivors), but it's still about zombies. These days, for a Major Hollywood studio to spend even over a hundred million dollars on a zombie film is a risk, even if they stick in a few big stars (see Zombieland). The reason? The genre has become so insanely saturated, and genuinely has been for the better part of 30 years now. To make a decent film about the undead, you'd better have a darn good new idea. And Colin doesn't.
There are a multitude of moody slow shots where nothing really happens - and the film’s packed with neutered sequences involved people grunting, pretending to walk like zombies, and pushing each other around in confused long sequences devoid of any real sense of threat or menace. There are also a fair few scenes obviously shot in the hall of someone's shared flat. I know that isn't the fault of the filmmakers - I'm all for people with no money making movies, but it's very difficult to suspend one's disbelief at any point in the 97 minutes.
It also might be surprising to hear that there is basically no dialogue at all in this film, save for a few moments of shouting about 3 times. It's probably also surprising to hear that the lack of speaking honestly makes very little difference - in theory it's very interesting to learn about Colin's life and world (before he became a zombie) simply by observing what he observes. The incessantly frustrating problem is that there really isn't very much for him to observe at all. What he comes across and finds is unexciting, obvious and lacks any true impact.
What's impressive though is that most of the performances are actually completely fine - the actors do the best they can with the material, which really isn't much. But in watching the movie, you get the creeping feeling that perhaps all acting is completely ridiculous - when it's all so real and unpolished as it is here, you get the sense that a load of people pretending to be people who they aren't and walking around with blood capsules in their mouths and bumping into walls (and being filmed all the while) is just all a bit silly.
Let's get back to this claim that only £45 was spent on the production of this film. Marc Price actually says that he planned to spend no money at all on the movie - turns out that the only cash was shelled out for impromptu items like biscuits, batteries and some extra film for the camera. Leftover makeup was used to save the pennies(very well actually – some impressive gory and gruesome moments that rival some much bigger films). Free extras, homemade special effects and editing done on a PC software package that the director was given also helped. The figure of £45 has been a great hook for the media to talk about of course, but in the end this is a no-budget movie that got extremely lucky indeed.
I don't want to undermine the sterling work that Marc Price has done here (he's the director, editor, producer, tea boy, best boy, key grip, driver, location scout and... erm... probably other stuff too). He spent a huge amount of the last few years putting it together, and it's a labour of love. It's an incredible feat to make a feature film of any kind - and in many scenes you can almost hear his creative mind whirring as we get a clever angle or a lingering shot. I really do wish him all the best - and who knows, perhaps he will become a very accomplished director one day. It's a good thing that he's been noticed now - and will hopefully get some kind of an offer to do something else off the back of this film, but Colin should never in a billion years have had a theatrical release. In fact, it probably shouldn't even have been a feature length film, and would probably have been much more effective as a short. A great experiment and a massive personal accomplishment for everyone who was involved, but a rubbish film.