Synopsis
It's a month into a zombie outbreak ad the South East of the UK has been quarantined. It's not just the infected inside the borders, there are survivors too... and the one person who might hold the cure.
Review
I really wanted to like this one. With an 18 rating and the promise of zombie carnage I figured it would be an easy win... well, there was definitely carnage.
There are so many more issues than there are plus points. That coming from someone who disconnects the reality filter when they go into any movie is a bad thing. I'll start with the pluses. Although the more I think about it the more I believe it is really only a singular point.
When I read that synopsis I was hooked. The storyline is simple and yet you can see how you'd get a whole film out of it. I knew I was going to love it, because let's face it, even a "bad" zombie movie is still a good zombie movie. Or so I thought. Many of those not so good movies creep over into being funny and therefore take on a whole new life as an unintentional comedy, Redcon-1 really didn't.
So to the massive spoilery section because I really can't review this without getting the annoyances off my chest...
The actual filming of this movie stuck out to me, and genuinely this isn't something I notice unless something sticks out like a sore thumb. (I know, I'm a terrible movie goer!) The footage seemed to have a lot of different styles. Action scenes felt almost like game play. I can understand using that style, a lot of the people this is aimed at would be comfortable with that style and it puts you into the action more. Yet it never seemed to commit to that the whole way through and felt a little confused. In contrast though quite a few of the more dramatic scenes (and by dramatic I mean, serious talking bits without zombies in) felt more like shots taken out of 90's crime dramas like Prime Suspect and Silent Witness.
Actors worked with what they were given, but I didn't find much of it "believable". A lot of the time it was because the script was making their characters do something that seemed completely out of place.
The next annoyance reared it's head twice for different reasons:
The team go into a block of flats to search for their target... of course the place is littered with zombies waiting to get them. Now. I don't know my zombie infection science but I would generally assume that you wouldn't want to really get any on you just in case. We also know from the film that zombie one was infected when she bit zombie patient zero. So yeah, let's stay away from the blood, right? Noooope. They engage the zombie hoard in close quarter combat, bare hands, blood spurting, and they're not equip with anything other than pretty standard fatigues.
This then becomes even more annoying when later we see Sgt Paige attack a zombie. Blood splatters across her face and into her mouth and we later discover that she's infected because of it. Seriously, there is no way that this team all managed to avoid getting blood in their eyes or mouth when they were murdering zombies.
More than once during the film I got the impression that they forgot bits in the script but weren't willing to do a full J.K. rewrite so came up with some quick fixes. The Captain and our youngest survivor get captured by a gang who are looking for revenge. Both are likely to die in the encounter, but wait... they need to live... Cue a sudden plot twist that changed the gang's demeanour from sour to sweet and our duo get released.
Redcon-1 does have a perfect team of stereotypical military personel. The Captain with a purpose, a love interest, a person of faith, a guy who can play the guitar, a crazed person who loves to kill. They also throw in a guy with swords because we should always see zombies cut in half. Except you never see a flying severed head or limb. I don't even know if that would really happen, but that's what I'm programmed to think from other things and not having it was disappointing.
What should you do?
I'm not going to say don't see it, I wasn't bored while watching it I was just annoyed.
Movie thing you wish you could take home
I could do with having that immunity to the zombie plague. Just in case.
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