The Killing Strain

I love zombie movies, even the not so great ones. But this one is really JUNK.

The storyline is simple. A man and his wife get a flat tire during a zombie outbreak. The wife is attacked by a zombie and becomes one. The man survives and reaches a house where more people are hiding from the zombies. The idea is not new but could be just fine for a zombie flick.

The movie is full of clichés and the acting is so terrible it's almost hilarious. I have never seen so many actors in one movie acting this badly and every dialog is so horrible it's just painful.

Don't waste your time. Skip this one.

1/10

You can tell right from the start that this is a low budget film, so if you're expecting top of the line acting, directing, and writing, then this just isn't for you. Remember Robert Rodriguez's low-budget flick El Mariachi? This movie's style reminded me of that one in many ways. This felt like a low budget attempt by passionate people doing the best they could with what they had and watching it from that perspective, I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would! In that vein, I think it has a lot in common with Romero's original Night of the Living Dead as well. Unfortunately, this felt a little like someone trying to remake it rather than do something original. If you love zombie movies like I do, then you probably won't see anything new, but I don't think you'll be disappointed, either.

The Killing Strain is your run of the mill low budget zombie/virus movie. In all honesty the movie was not bad, it just was not good. There was nothing extraordinary to separate it from movies such as anything from the Dead Series by George Romero or even the 28 Days Later. So as you can already see the bar is set high to begin with. Yes, this is a low budget reflection of great movies in this genus, however; budget restraints aside there still was nothing that popped out at you and immediately or grabbed your attention. No amazing scenes of violence or compassion. Nor was the sub-standard acting done well, it was hard to tell if the actors played there parts purposely over the top, or was the acting that God awful again, hard to say. The pace of the movie was enjoyable at least they were no long drawn out explanation of what lead to this disaster. I just wish the Directors and writers would have taken the time to put a plot together that would take hold of you, instead we are treated to an ordinary run of the mill zombie-ish movie that will not differentiate it's self from over a 100 other such titles.

THE KILLING STRAIN is another garden-variety zombie movie, made at an independent level (and on the cheap) and shot out in the wilds of Texas. It's a pretty unconvincing and uninteresting little movie, content to plough well-furrowed fields instead of chronicling anything new, and is let down as a whole by the usual constraints of indie film-making.

The main problem the film has is the derivative script which fails to give the viewer either an interesting storyline or likable characters. The amateur cast do their best but their roles are very ordinary with nobody standing out from the crowd. The special effects are limited and the zombies in the film are just your bog standard looking types with little to distinguish them from another hundred movies.

In essence the film is a version of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, with various survivors holing up together in remote buildings to survive an onslaught of the living dead. If no other zombie movies existed then this one would feel quite exciting, but it's that over-familiarity that ruins it for me; to make a mark these days, a zombie film has to do something really special, instead of being merely ordinary.

Wow! I went to see the midnight premiere of this film in San Antonio, TX since a large portion of the film was shot on some land owned by my family, and several of my relatives played zombies. I am sorry to say that this film did not turn out into anything remotely resembling a polished, well-made film. Where to start? The acting was cheesy, non-fluid and everything about the film just felt forced. There was horrible timing issues (delayed reactions) probably due to poor editing in the cutting room. The acting was so bad, it borderlines on being funny, but there was such an obvious intent to be serious that it turns out to be just painful.

The plot itself is pretty standard of zombie films, (of which I am normally a fan) beginning with an experiment going horribly wrong and the entire region (South Texas in this case) becoming infected. Eventually the entire crew gets stranded in a house, and just seem to stay there for the entire movie. It was quite boring, with the only interruptions being the anticipated attack on the house by zombies, and the standard searching for supplies to escape routine which you would expect. This isn't necessarily a bad thing if it is done right, like in Night of the Living Dead which kept a certain amount of excitement (albeit cheesy and over-the-top) throughout the whole feature. Instead, the whole thing felt more like a high school kid with an expensive camera,some friends and some money to blow to create a film, as opposed to a professional director and group of actors.

Finally, the errors in this film were just too much to handle. The CG effects were laughable at best and entailed a still-framed picture with some fire and/or smoke added in for effect. In several of the scenes, you could actually see a loading symbol in the bottom right from the computer editing program which was never removed. But the worst part were the inexplicable UFO's which were shown on the horizon in a scene near the end of the movie. It looked like the whole thing was stolen from another film and then destroyed cars, fire and obviously fake mannequins with blood were just superimposed over the image. Add in a few plot holes (I don't hold it against them too much, it IS a zombie movie after all) and COUNTLESS continuity errors (such was firearms mysteriously appearing and reappearing with different people in different parts of the film) and you have a film which looked and felt like the group was making last-minute edits to the film up through the car ride over to the theater. Avoid at all costs!!!