New Life

John Rosman's New Life tries to breathe exactly that into the zombie genre, and only somewhat succeeds. This is a film with some good atmosphere, scenery and genuinely disturbing special effects but it's consistently unclear in narrative, distracted by its own weird subplots and never quite grounds itself in anything wholly cohesive. A young girl (Hayley Erin) is on the run from the director (Tony Amendola) of a nefarious institute who has hired a mysterious fixer (Sonia Walger) to track her down and eliminate her. Why? Well I've already mentioned zombies earlier which isn't a secret the film really keeps too well from the outset, so there you go. The film is at its strongest when it focuses on the young girl evading her pursuers, seeking food and shelter from a kindly farmer and his wife, the simplicity of moving from place to place. When the story pivots back to the fixer is when it sort of loses momentum; Walger is a great actress whose work I love in LOST, but she's saddled with an odd arc here. Too much dialogue and a bizarre subplot about her early onset ALS do nothing for the story at large and just muddy things up. It also suffers from a jarringly abrupt ending and a general lack of focus.

I almost skipped this movie after reading the extremely negative reviews it got on here, certainly the ones stating I shouldn't trust the first ratings as most often those are biased, a thing I totally agree with. But a friend watched it and told me it wasn't that bad so I gave it a shot and I'm glad I did because it was entertaining. Maybe not the best in this genre but still worth a watch if you like that kind of stories. I sure do. Hayley Erin and Sonya Walger play the main characters and we're both convincing. Sure there are no Oscar winning performances, neither for the script that feels like a déjà-vu but it's just easy entertainment and sometimes that's just all that I need.

Agent Elsa Gray is tasked with tracking down Jessica Murdock, who's on the run and heading for The Canadian border. Unbeknown to Elsa, Jessica is hiding a deadly secret.

The short running time appealed to me, and that was both good and bad, good that I could squeeze it in one afternoon, bad because at times it felt a tad rushed.

The opening is simply bizarre, you won't know who's who, or what's happening, it really does take time to work out what's happening, the trouble is, when it does, and the action starts, it's not long before the credits roll.

Some good action sequences, and a few jump scares, there's nothing new here, nothing we haven't seen several times before, but there is some originality here.

The twist, when it comes it unexpected, it really did catch me off guard, a story I simply wasn't expecting.

Nicely acted, good visuals, with some rather effective makeup, overall a decent watch. I don't find myself saying this very often, I just wish it was longer.

6/10.

New life was a bit of a mixed bag. It was not an awful film. But it was odd and felt like it ended out of no where with an ending that felt like it did not tie anything together. Hayley erin plays jessica. Though we dont find out her name till too late. Theres no context as to what happens to jessica before we meet her, shes coverd in blood and with a black eye and she runs, she looks frightened and runs. But shes not alone as elsa is hot on her trail and for good reason, jessica has something bad in her and it cant get out to everyone. They have a chase and it feels like not a lot else happens in the film. Good acting in this but the film itself let it down. Hayley erin made the film more believable and overall that was it really.

I didn't have high expectations when I went to see this movie. This synopsis sounded intriguing, however my anticipation for this movie was limited.

The start is rather slow and our protagonist (Jess) meets and older couple and through their interactions you get to know her a little better. The order couple is lovely and definitely adds some emotional weight to the movie. We are also introduced to our other protagonist (Elsa) who is trying to find Jess. As soon as Elsa arrives at the older couples place, intriguing things start happening. From that point on the movie had my full attention since I like the subject matter. The first contact with our threat is made and it was portrayed really effective and was a thrilling contrast to the slow start. A minor complained is that there is a really cheap jump scare which was absolutely unnecessary. On the other hand there are some really well made makeup effects to be seen.

However the narrative progresses and there are new characters introduced. And then the movie kinda just ends. I felt like the ending was pretty abrupt and felt a little bit unfinished. It could have been a rather big finale but instead we get a pretty short ending. Overall I really like the idea of this movie and going in without knowing what exactly this was about was a really nice decision. It's definitely not a masterpiece or a movie that will be remembered in a couple of years from now with how many movies are being released nowadays, but it was certainly a good watch and a nice way to spend not even 90 minutes. [6,2/10]