Zombie Hood

This film essentially begins at the very start of a zombie apocalypse somewhere in Great Britain with a virus that is very quick-acting and initially results in extremely fast zombies. And because of these two factors the epidemic spreads extremely quickly and catches all of the police and military completely off-guard. But having said that, there are some survivors who are able to adapt to the situation and for them the task at hand is to escape in order to live another day. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that at first the characters were not well identified and it is possible that the director (Steve Best) used them to illustrate the severity of of the overall situation. This techinique, however, caused the movie to seem rather slow and redundant. Fortunately, as the film progressed certain characters became better known and developed with one small group in particular being showcased. And it's at this point that the film becomes a bit more interesting. That being said, however, this was clearly a low-budget production and for that reason it suffers somewhat accordingly. Be that as it may, while not a good zombie movie by any means, it wasn't all that bad either and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

I wanted this to be a great local film. So maybe my review is going to be based more on disappointment than neutral reflection. I really wanted this to be a film which demonstrated that a low budget film made by amateurs who just wanted to make a film for the fun and experience of it could compete with the pro's. In some respects the illusion of pro was achieved. The camera work is generally good, the excellent make up and special effects is on a par with the big boys, and considering the amateur status their is some generally believable acting. There are also some good individual scenes, but herein lies the problem. The film feels like a series of individual scenes with just a loose coherence of plot to hold it together. There are so many random death scenes happening outside the core characters that they lose their identity within the film. The characters are diluted, and as they seem to have no set desires or goals outside of survival you have no affinity or connection with them. To use a rather poor metaphor if I may. A good film has a spine of a plot with the characters running along it and the skin and muscle are the scenes that put flesh of story on the film. Zombie Hood feels more of an exoskeleton of plot with all the guts and scenes thrown in to make a film. So if you are a Zombie aficionado then watch zombie hood, if you live in the East Mids where it was made then watch zombie hood as for both reasons you will get something from this film. I applaud the people who made this film, I really do, I just wanted it to be ....more?

Whilst there is such a high standard now for B movie films this does not try to be anything other than what it is. A film where the undead come back to life and eat people. The effects are very good considering, although over emphasised on the odd occasion, this doesn't detract from the film - I would say storyline, but there's obviously not much of one. The location is perfect, Nottingham and surrounding areas carry this film brilliantly... The urban chaos, the nice areas, the poor areas and of course the wooded areas. From what I understand the film was done on DSLR's which for an avid DSLR user is encouraging for myself. I'd hope to think that people watching this be inspired and encouraged to grab their DSLR, and have a bash themselves.

The only negative I took away from the film was the sound was not always clear, by that I mean it didn't pick up the voices as good as it should have in certain scenes.