The Killing Strain

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!!!

Another of the many lame zombie movies to come down the pike. I'll start this out by saying this; if you're even thinking of watching this trash, skip it and go watch The Girl With All The Gifts or Train to Busan. Those are worth your time. This is a cliché ridden, poorly acted, lame mostly rip off of Night of the Living dead. It starts with a flat tire. Guys wife goes to take pictures - she gets attacked, killed and turns. Guy runs off, finds the worst boarded up farm house in the universe, filled with all stereotype characters, one's a redneck, one's a granny, two are hot girls (one's the rednecks girlfriend) and the final guy may or may not be gay. They don't know it but... Just do yourself a huge favor. Skip this silliness. You'll be grateful.

I picked up "The Killing Strain" from Amazon because of one reason; it is a zombie movie. I am a sucker for zombies, and just have to watch all that I can. When I received the movie by mail, I put it in my 'to-watch-pile' because the DVD cover looked sort of discount-like. So nearly two months pass by before I sit down to watch it.

"The Killing Strain" really surprised me, because it was not the kind of cheesy, low-budget crap zombie movie that I expected it to be. There was actually good production to this movie and they had fairly good actors and actresses on the cast list.

The story in "The Killing Strain" is as you have seen in countless zombie movies prior to this one. A strange infection is rampart, turning people into mindless killing machines - zombies, if you will - and the protagonists find themselves in the middle of the chaos. Yeah, nothing new here. But still, the movie was executed in such a manner that it managed to keep me entertained and watching. Being trapped in a farmhouse, again very cliché, there is a group of people coming together for survival, and of course personalities and tempers clash as not everyone is on the same page. And sure, the characters were fairly generic and cliché, but still it worked out well enough.

There was one thing that I didn't really like in the movie, and that is the "28 Days Later"-style zombies that are fast, agile and running about. But hey that is all a matter of preference. And the movie was still great, despite the running zombies.

The effects were good as well, and the zombies had great make-up. Now, you didn't really get the tradition guts, gore and gorging on intestines that you usually get in Romero's movies and such. But the zombies still had a great touch of being dead to the make-up and effects.

I don't understand the low rating this movie have gotten, because I found it to be one of the better non-blockbuster-produced zombie movies I have seen in quite some time.

As for the ending of the movie, well, I will not spoil anything by revealing it here, but that ending was so obvious, it could be seen coming a mile away.

I just saw a screening of this at it's weekend debut at one of the three theaters it showed in San Antonio. I have to say that it does some decent justice to the zombie genre.

I actually went to school with and acted in the director/writer's first stage production back in high school. Daniel has come a long way since "Await The Eclipse" by a long shot.

Not to say this is the most ground breaking zombie film by any means (it is quite hard to do so as the genre has been milked out of all scenarios it can possibly handle), but it is very entertaining in it's own right.

If anything it is a great glimpse of what is to come from these great actors and formidable director. There were great performances from the leads and the comic relief of the the character 'Neil' caused much intentioned laughter from the crowd. By the applause after the screening I think the crowed got what they came for and I would deem this effort a success.