Dir. Mark Price

97mins, UK, 2009

Cast: Alastair Kirton, Daisey Aitkens, Kate Alderman, Leanne Pammen, Leigh Crocombe

Release Date: 23rd October 2009

Certificate: 15

Review by Matthew Rodgers

First time director Mark Price claims to have spent a much publicised £45 on this hyped up little zombie flick that has risen from the constraints of its budgetary grave and shuffled en mass into the public consciousness via 24 hour news stations and daily rags. The costs accrued were attributed to tea and biscuits for the volunteer cast and crew. There can’t have been the extravagance of bourbon biscuits on offer because Price has crafted a gritty little genre entry that surpasses the most recent Romero entries in terms of quality, and puts the majority of Hollywood efforts with budgets a million times this one (and no doubt wagon wheels for the cameramen) to shame.

The premise is as basic as the single DV cam used; Colin (Alastair Kirton) returns home, leaving the sounds of gunfire (actually fireworks recorded by Price on bonfire night) to echo behind him in an all too familiar zombie apocalypse/end of the world scenario. He has been bitten, and as we all know from Night of the Living Dead through to 28 Days Later (almost like a big brother to this), it won’t be long before Colin is doing a shuffle straight out of Thriller. But instead of getting obliterated by Milla Jovovich, this takes the unique tack of following Colin’s journey through the undead streets of a faceless Britain.

Aside from the zombie POV, there is very little about Colin that’s original. There are splatters of Edgar Wright to be found in some of the editing techniques – the infection transition is dug from the raw roots of Spaced, and there are some neat techniques used to get around the problems of a single camera shoot - it also can’t help but regurgitate the icky memories of Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, in both style and origin.

Its real triumph is in the surprising tone of the film, comparisons with Jackson’s debut end here simply because this isn’t a tongue in cheek gore fest. At its core is a wonderful story of loneliness and prejudice that may have you rubbing your eyes rather than covering them. There are some truly affecting moments, a newborn Colin learns to stand with Bambi like trepidation, his fingers cracking a la American Werewolf. And then there’s the tender moment in which he catches his own reflection, confused and scared, it’s a scene of unexpected pathos. All credit to Kirton and Price that this dialogue-free lump of flesh [just about] maintains our interest for ninety minutes.

Like all of the best horror movies, Price attempts to prove Colin isn’t braindead by permeating the script with a few subtexts of his own. Most notably we get a zombie with a hole in his pocket, leaking change without any reaction or response. Credit crunch you say? He may as well be wearing a bowler hat and carrying a brolly.

Similarly it asks you to take a look at our morally bankrupt society, and in particular the all too familiar stories of abuse and kidnap that have raised their revolting heads in the last couple of years. They are addressed with one of the movies true moments of horror, when a degenerate survivor uses some basement dwelling zombies for his own perverted means. Who are the real monsters of the tale?

The initially jarring amateur acting becomes endearing once you embrace the aesthetic, and Colin deserves to be more than “the little film that could”. And if the filmmakers never work again, their success should inspire likeminded talents to create their own mini-masterpieces, because even Scorsese had to start somewhere.