The Night the Dead Walked

There are a number of fan films for the horror genre out there. You can barely walk 5 feet without tripping over a new Friday the 13th fan project or an Amityville movie. Of course one type of fan film you don't get is Night of the Living Dead fan films, especially when those films largely play off the original film.

This story follows Kyle and Doug and they hide out due to a strange zombie invasion of their neighborhood. The plot is straight forward and has a few little flourishes that come back to the original but you have to pay attention at times to catch them. Otherwise there are a few little twist that are different from others in the genre which is great as it kind of reflects the original's ambiguity.

The acting was ok both main actors did fair and that is good by any microbudget standard. The zombies were fun to watch though I would have like to have seen a shirt change for Kyle when he was a zombie vs. Being a survivor as Kyle zombie was not actually supposed to be the same person. I would also have liked to see the stabbing motion for one of the kills be a bit more jerky and realistic as it does look like the zombie is stabbing air.

The production value here is pretty decent. Doug is a master at special effects though I do feel a lot of the makeup was minimal and that could be to reflect how things were in the film it is working off of. They do the black and white and this works out pretty nicely and together with the makeup it feels very much like the original Night of the Living Dead.

I feel that as fan films go, this fills a niche that was largely absent in the genre. For the most part this was a solid piece as far as short films go and I look forward to seeing what else comes from these three in the future.