Thursday, September 13, 2012

French Zombies in "The Horde"

I miss going to the video store to rent movies but the advantage of Netflix -- being able to browse movies, watching each one for a few minutes to see if it grabs me -- outweighs that loss. Plus, I've watched some really good films and TV shows that I otherwise wouldn't have. (And it also allowed me to completely avoid some trash.)

One of those non-trash films -- at least in my opinion -- is The Horde. (It's no gem, but it held my attention.)

It's a good zombie flick, especially if you can stand the extreme gore. The biggest problem is that the description of the film obliterates the surprise, the sudden "Oh, we have bigger problems right now!" turn of events that turns the plans of some corrupt cops to kill the drug dealer responsible for the death of one of their own into a scramble for survival.

Their revenge plot isn't going so well when the bad and badder guys come under attack by super strong and fast zombies. These aren't the kind of zombies found in The Walking Dead. These ones are more along the lines of 28 Days Later. And from what the survivors can see from the roof of the apartment building it's pretty much the end of the world. What ensues is survivors alternating turning on each other and working together to escape the building to (hopefully) reach a nearby military base. The end is rather stark and depressing but it wrapped up the way the zombie apocalypse probably should.

I just wish the film description was misleading or omitted any mention of zombies. If the description focused on the revenge aspect of the four corrupt cops, that probably would have been enough. Make the zombies an actual surprise.

The Horde also suffers the same problem as nearly every other zombie film. Though it's set in the "real world" zombie films don't exist. No one automatically says, "Shoot for the head!" There's always this drawn out process of figuring out how walking corpses might be put down. That's just kind of irritating. If I saw a shambling horde of zombies coming down the street right now I'd know to aim for the head.

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