Damn it, this was so close. Helluva set-up: Grant Mazzy is a veteran radio personality stuck doing the morning show in a small, snowy Canadian town. What plays out next is pure Orson Welles as reports start to trickle in about strange occurrences in the area, including a gathering mob that soon turns violent. All the time, we see nothing but the inside of the studio as the tension builds through the reactions of Mazzy (character actor Stephen McHattie--think Lance Hendrikson mixed with Hugh Laurie) and his staff.
Which brings us to the crossroads. Go one way, director Bruce McDonald maintains the movie as a study of paranoia and the unknown, relying on his storytelling to escalate the terror. It's risky, but where else to take a narrative leap but in a low-budget genre film. The other way, which you probably guessed is the way we went, is to bring on the zombies. One choice isn't better than the other. It's what happens after the choice that counts.
To McDonald's credit, he has gone on record as stating that the infected people in this film are not zombies. He refers to them as "conversationalists" because the disease is language-based. Certain words--different for everybody--trigger a neurological lockdown where "you become so distraught at your condition that the only way out of the situation you feel, as an infected person, is to try and chew your way through the mouth of another person." It's always interesting to see a new twist, but there's no science here to back it up in the slightest. That's not even the real problem. There's not even any pseudo-science to back it up. The "why" is never fully revealed. Again, this is okay if you are confident to leave your story shrouded in mystery. Which leads us back to the choice to reveal the "zombies."
The radio station is soon overrun by infected townspeople as well as a doctor whose connection to the epidemic is never explained but who is presented as the key to solving the puzzle. The character (or the actor, or both) is a mess. He's goofy and babbling and kills the carefully-developed tone of the film. And adds nothing. At this point the whole concept breaks down and the resolution feels made up on the spot. It feels like no one had any idea what to do in the second half of the film. Still better than Dead Snow, though.
This sounds like one I wish I would've seen. Well, except for the 2nd half of it anyways. Must've hit a little too close to home, the whole radio dj thing, bet he didn't have your fan base though.
ReplyDelete