| Dir. Marc Price, 97 mins, UK , 2008
Cast. Alastair Kirton, Daisy Aitkens, Tat Whalley
Review by Michelle Moore
The prospect of a new zombie movie is quite exciting, though watching Colin , your excitement is likely to evaporate rather quickly. The story is simple; a zombie bites Colin (Kirton), he turns into one and the reminder of the film follows him as he adapts to this new existence. Not the most original of plots and the film has its fair set of bad points. There are however a few noteworthy aspects.
The first is its budget – or rather lack of it. Writer/director Marc Price claims to have made the film for just £45 using the services of over 100 cast and crew through friends and friends of friends as well as social networks sites Myspace and Facebook, all working for no wages. He shot the movie on a 5-year-old mini DV camcorder and another one twice as old to create some interesting camera shots such as visions through glass when Colin goes through “the change” and a sequence where he is tied up in the bathroom with his sister observing his reflection in the mirror. The crew developed their own props such as the canisters used towards the end of the film, they did all their own make up and Price created the distant gunfire that can be heard by recording the explosion of fireworks. It is also, Price claims, the first zombie movie to be told entirely from the point of view of the zombie.
The film is also remarkable in its lack of dialogue. Failure to beg, borrow or steal enough sophisticated sound equipment perhaps? Or maybe because zombies don't usually talk. The few scenes where there is any dialogue, it consists mainly of foul language. In order to follow the story, we are reliant on lavish use of music and the visuals.
While it is therefore an admirable example of how to make a movie with virtually no money, there are many more downsides to Colin than upsides. As the visuals towards the end get more horrific, the way in which they are filmed ruins the effect completely. The camera is shaky and unfocused in a way which is reminiscent or indeed worse than The Blair Witch Project. Some shots focus pointlessly on inanimate objects, others are far too long and there is endless and tedious repetition of Colin walking up and down the road. There are a few scenes, as in a basement sequence, which appear to have been shot in total darkness, making it incredibly difficult to make out any of the images and leaving us reliant on the small amount of sound to make any sense of things.
There are other moments which are unintentionally laughable, as when Colin's mother papers up the windows, so her zombie offspring cannot escape, yet “accidentally” leaves the back door unlocked and Colin falls out of a window. The sounds made by the zombies are reminiscent of rabid animals or monkeys fighting at a zoo and their movements more like those of unstable occupants of a mental institution than the undead.
The film is understandably very rough around the edges but it is not its lack of budget that causes the problems. It is the plot, the majority of the camera shots and the lack of dialogue. Boredom sets in about 10 minutes after Colin begins and never subsides.
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