Play Dead

I saw this at the Spooky Film Fest in DC and I was floored. Such a creative and well thought out concept. It blew the bad feature it played with out of the water. I can't wait to see more of this. Totally "Homeward Bound" meets "Dawn of the Dead". Very well written and wonderful camera work too. I am telling everyone I know to check this movie out! I loved the makeup and the colors of the film. Very unique take on the end of the world. Just when you thought zombies had been done and then done again, someone finally makes an originally piece. I hope people throw money at them to make the feature because it will be huge.

A zombie apocalypse breaks out in an American city . 28 days later only a small handful of survivors remain , but not all of these survivors are human because dogs too have survived and band together to face the zombie onslaught

Yet another zombie horror short but great credit to the Valdes duo for coming up with a plan to bring something different to the zombie apocalypse table by having the focus of the story on a band of canine survivors and reading the plot synopsis on this page of " Sit . Stay . Play dead " I was fascinated how this might play out on screen because something like this must have been an immense challenge to even the most level headed and dedicated director

The bad news is that the plot summary on this page is rather misleading . Either that or I misled myself that the focus of the story was going to entirely revolve round dogs fighting adversity in the shape of the undead which isn't really the case . That said it would have perhaps been very difficult to realise if this was the point of the story , after all how do dogs communicate how they're feeling etc on screen . Instead the dogs are used more as a framing device as they wander in to one scene after another

This might be seen as something of a pity but PLAY DEAD is more in keeping as being a love letter of sorts to the zombie horror sub-genre . It does make very obvious references to 28 DAYS LATER and we see a couple of survivors stuck on a shopping mall roof which you've seen before via Romero and Snyder . Indeed this is a film that will certainly appeal more to zombie junkies rather than animal lovers

With so many zombie movies in the world of short films, it is nice to find one where it tries to do something different – and this is how Play Dead comes across. The device here is that dogs are not affected by the zombie plague which is weeping across humanity and they continue to wander around while their owners get turned into so much special effects. It is a nice idea but the problem is that beyond setting up the title and having some credits on the dogs when we meet them, they are not particularly well used other than being a device to show zombies attacking humans.

On this front the short does a decent enough job since it is gory and quite fast-paced in how it does this, but the dog thing actually distracts from these aspects which are well done. The references to other zombie films by way of the mall rooftop, the use of 28 days as the specific time period that passes etc will please fans but are never lingered on to try and create a narrative. What we get then is a series of bloody incidents and the thread that connects them all is not particularly good. The zombie action is well done, just a shame that the device that appeared to offer a fresh and clever take on the genre actually turned out to be the weakest aspect of the whole thing.