Reviewed by Mike Martin
Stars Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, Danielle Panabaker, Christie Lynn Smith, Brett Rickaby, Preston Bailey, John Aylward, Joe Reegan
Written by Scott Kosar & Ray Wright
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 90 minutes
Directed by Breck Eisner
George A Romero will forever be known as "the zombie man" but here he’s happy to hand over the reins to a young buck director – and it’s a good idea. The remake of Romero’s 1973 outbreak movie is pacy, punchy, tight and nasty in all the right places, helped by some fine performances and, of course, buckets of gore – Eisner doesn’t stray too far away from his mentor. The word "zombie" is never actually used in the film either – we’re not even sure if that’s what they are.
The film gets off to a cracking opening. Olyphant is sheriff David Dutton in sleepy, isolated farming community Ogden Marsh, his pregnant wife Judy (Mitchell) is the local doctor. Dutton is happily watching the opening baseball match of the season when a local farmer wanders onto the field with a shotgun, and the sheriff takes him down, assuming his nosebleed is the result of heavy drinking. When the team coach also starts bleeding and behaving strangely Dutton puts him in jail, where he shows the symptoms of some terrible virus – veins popping, eyes bulging, teeth sharpening.
Dutton and his reliable deputy Russell (Anderson) start to search for the source, and find a crashed military plane in a swamp, the water from which feeds the local supply. Before he can evacuate the town though the military seem to be intent on sealing it and bumping off the ‘infected’. His problems grow when his wife is marked out as a carrier due to a high temperature when in fact she just has a fever. The three of them have to escape, reveal to the outside world what has happened and save Judy’s assistant Becca (Panabaker) – which will involve a lot of driving and blasting the infected with a variety of weaponry.
Eisner has two great weapons on his side here – his cast and his ability with set pieces. Olyphant and Mitchell make a highly believable couple, he is totally protective of his pregnant wife, she is the epitome of a strong heroine. They are both fine actors and take the material seriously, even though there’s not much detail in the script about their characters. When the couple go on the run they have several battles with the infected, one a brilliantly staged sequence in a car wash, and there’s a real sense of danger and paranoia lurking here. When Judy is tied to a hospital bed with a crazed killer pushing his garden fork through her neighbours it’s unbearably tense and well handled.
Zombie films have historically been linked to fears of invasion, racism and communism, but here the agenda seems to be health-based, and the fear of virus outbreaks. Whatever is behind it, it’s a solid addition to the many zombie films out there and great popcorn fun.