The Vanguard (2008)

It's five years past doomsday somewhere in the English countryside. The attempt of "The Corporation" to kill three quarters of the world's population (to make the world a better place, of course) has badly backfired and instead created creatures called "Biosyns", basically the good old fast zombies. What is left of civilization is dominated by the Corporation and their brainwashed killer commandos.

Max (Ray Bullock, jr.) has been living alone in the wilderness for some years now, waiting for a man called Hareem Jabbar, who is supposed to help him find his way to a less lethal place without the Corporation or the Biosyns. Years of living completely alone and doing terrible things to survive, as well as fighting against the zombies have taken their toll on him. The competence with which he fights and survives seems to be based in barely controlled self-hate and rage.

Max's life is starting to change when a group of the Corporation's trackers is sent into his domain to neutralize him. They aren't the only survivors that he will meet, though. There are other people who want to get him to safety. If safety even exists...

 

Ah, the IMDb is still able to surprise me - not in a positive way of course. I just can't explain the negativity that place stinks of; the inability to take films for what they are is just puzzling.

User ratings and reviews there for The Vanguard are a great example of the kind of ignorance that turns the friendly guy next door into a hermit and the most self-controlled into a raving lunatic (Warning: I may be exaggerating, a little).

This film was obviously made for next to nothing, yet it still features surprisingly competent to really good acting, even without the mandatory incompetents in smaller roles. The ensemble carries the film in a way you seldom see in low budget films of this style.

The script makes a lot of a smattering of well-known pieces of post-apocalypse and zombie fiction, very conscious of the difficulty to make a film about the end of the world when the only location one can afford is a single patch of wood. Director/writer Matthew Hope avoids the pitfalls caused by this fact by letting his world building develop slowly, through bits and pieces and hints instead of too long expository dialogue. Sure, some of Max's off-screen monologue is bit flowery, but I'll take flowery over stupid any time.

Problematic for some could be the lack of much of a plot in the usual sense. Mood and characters are the points of interest here; it's about why characters are how they are and why they act like they act and less about the actions themselves. Which doesn't mean there's no action at all, there's just not much of a sense of outward progression that is part of a well plotted movies. Personally, I don't care all that much about plot, so I was fine with this point.

Visually, the film tries to create a sense of dynamics through much jittery camera movement and the use of the curse of film making in the digital age, filters. To my surprise, it succeeds most of the time - at least I never got nauseous or too annoyed.

I was also quite pleased with the Biosyns as a variation of the dreaded fast zombie as creatures more animals than walking corpses, something I don't think I've seen quite this way before.

So, if you can find a place in your heart for plot-deficient, character-heavy post-apocalyptic zombie films, I'd highly recommend this to you.

 

(Thanks to Lurple for pointing me into the direction of this movie.)

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