Starring Alastair Kirton, Daisy Aitkens, Kate Alderman, Kerry Owen
Directed by Marc Price
The zombie film is one of those trends in indie filmmaking that I’ve been at times both very happy about and very sick of. Zombies are very easy to do, when you think about it; you limited locations, some decent makeup work and a cast of extras who just have to shuffle around a lot and you’re set. So it’s encouraging to see someone out there trying to do something different.
Colin hails from the UK, the brainchild of Marc Price who did pretty much everything except act out all the roles for the film. What makes it unique is that the entire film is told through the perspective of the titular character, who becomes one of the hungry undead in the film’s opening moments. We follow Colin as he makes his way across a London suburb, encountering other zombies and, of course, desperate survivors just trying to make it from one place to another without being bit.
In that sense, Colin serves as a kind of zombie film greatest hits; he shambles into all sorts of survivor scenarios, from a group of friends trapped in a house that has clearly just been overtaken by the undead, to a squad of warm bodies who have taken it upon themselves to hunt down and eradicate the zombies (they even have a stoic leader in a trenchcoat) and more. These are the situations where the action ramps up, where you really feel like your in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.
And while I’m in complaint mode, I want to address the absolute most annoying thing about Colin, the element that almost made me shut it off and chuck it out the window a few times; fucking shaky cam. Anytime there’s an action sequence, the camera is apparently given to someone either in the midst of having seizure, or going through the DT’s big time, because they cannot for the life of them hold the camera fucking still. It’s very, very annoying and serves to completely take the viewer out of the moment that the filmmaker has so obviously been making serious efforts to suck you in to. The sad part is isn’t even something that can be fixed in editing; it’s just one criticism I really hope Price keeps in mind for his next project.
For a first-time effort, Colin shows a helluva lot of promise. The pacing and shaky cam issues aside, Price does a lot of things right with this study in the ways of he zombie and actually manages to give a bit of life (pun intended) to a sub genre that, for a while now, has grown pretty stagnant. No word on any kind of distribution yet but something of this quality won’t sit on a shelf too much longer, I’m sure.
3 1/2 out of 5
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