Tuesday, May 25, 2010

In short: La Horde (2009)

Three men walk into a bar, but suddenly, it's the zombie apocalypse. No, wait, that's not the plot of the movie. In fact, it goes a little something like this: four heavily armed cops-on-the-edge walk into a decrepit, nearly empty high rise on the edge of Paris to bloodily avenge the death of a colleague, but suddenly, it's the zombie apocalypse.

Now the would-be avengers and their would-be victims have to try to work together to escape the high rise, because the hundreds of zombies who have suddenly teleported in around it look like a too inviting party to miss.

Of course, surviving the squabbling among each other will be nearly as difficult as surviving the loud and fast menace.

Oh look, it's just another zombie film, only that this one is from France and tries to be more of an action film than a piece of horror. Unfortunately, most of the film consists of lots of scenes of people running around through dark and/or grey corridors, which is not something I find particularly exciting. The small handful of action set-pieces themselves are edited in a rather confusing shaky cam style that is probably meant to be exciting and visceral, but mostly manages to not show the things the film wants its audience to be excited about.

The character bits aren't anything to get excited about either. Although the actors are doing their best, the script doesn't give them much to do. All conflicts between the characters seem to be done by the book; once you have been introduced to them, you will know exactly what will happen between them. That would be alright by me if the characters were more sympathetic or just more vulnerable, and not the bunch of armed super-fighter arseholes the film delivers. As it stands, the movie just doesn't give me any reason to care.

La Horde is certainly not a bad film, alas it has nothing but basic, boring competence to distinguish it from the dozen other zombie films which came out last month. And that just isn't enough in a sub-genre that is as omnipresent as stories about the zombie apocalypse are right now.

 

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