Run!

Set in Phnom Penh, this film involves a small group of students who decide to go to a party one night after school. While at the party a couple of people hear something similar to a car crash and upon going out to investigate find themselves fighting for their lives from extremely fast and vicious people in a state of rage. It is then revealed that a virus created by scientists at a research laboratory had accidently infected one of the researchers and subsequently spread to a nearby hospital which soon got out of control. Meanwhile, back at the party, one of the students named "Chun" (Vathanak Seth) has become separated from the group and as the zombie epidemic rages it falls upon him to take care of a young child who needs his help while also trying to reconnect with his friends at the same time. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film had an excellent plot and greatly benefitted from the exotic location. Unfortunately, there were several technical aspects which severely impacted the overall production. For starters, although the subtitles were rather basic and elementary they still managed to convey enough necessary information to get the job done. But the real problems I had with this film had to do with both the audio sporadically cutting out and the video losing focus off and on. And it's because of these major faults that I have rated this film as low as I have.

This is one of those films where there is a glimmer of a good movie here. But it is ruined by the filmmakers not knowing how to film a movie or write a scene. And it should be noted that the filmmakers have some talent. The effective makeup and gore effects are proof of this. But the flaws overpower this. 1. As has been said before, the sound is terrible with the soundtrack often overpowering the dialogue to the point that you only know the characters are speaking because the subtitles show up on the screen. 2. We are apparently supposed to care about these characters. But we can't really care about them because we can't hear what they are saying and don't know who they really are as people. I only found out their names about 2/3 of the way into the movie and they really weren't given any identifiable personality traits. The dialogue itself seemed to be improvised for the most part and that is not always a good thing in a movie. The film needed to be rewritten. 3. It is always a bad sign when the director cannot control how his extras look or behave onscreen. When extras camp it up as much as they did here, you cannot take the film seriously. The zombies were in no way terrifying because the extras playing them camped it up so much that all the terror and horror was taken out of them. Honestly, I have never seen so many smiling zombies onscreen before. Yes, it looked like the people playing them were having a good time. But that doesn't necessarily translate to the viewer having a good time. And that is sad because, this film had some good moments to it. The director and crew have talent as do some of the actors. But they were overshadowed by what looked to be an amateurish production. Although the unintentional gaffes in the subtitles were funny.

While searching for zombie movies a friend of mine came across this and told me about it. I realised it was a Cambodian movie, IMDb lists just over 200 Cambodian movies and i don't remember ever seeing one before so i was curious to see what they had done with this movie.

It s a shame the sound is hit and miss, like they are using the came microphone rather than a boom or whatever movies use. I have seen many zombie movies (around 600ish so far) especially low budget ones and this is not bad at all considering Cambodian movie scene is sill in it is infancy and the low budget they had.

I would give a more detailed review of the story but i saw a review by Stuart Wilson that is linked from the IMDb site which i think describes it well and you can read it here. HTTP://hoopla.nu/films/run I have seen a lot better than this but then again i have seen a hell of a lot worse than this too and overall i liked it and if you like this type of movie i would say it is worth checking out.