Dead Within

Sticking needles ln my eyes would have been less painful than sitting thru this fiasco.

I hosted this to my friends on #Splatterday. It was well received. The set design and wardrobe make sense. The tension mounts as you get flashbacks of the apocalypse. The film is set more as a stage play and the undercurrents of the relationship rip though the film as in life. Sure, it may seem like a slow burn but the feelings and paranoia keep you on your seat. It has some gore and horrific imagery but if you are a fan like me, you will appreciate it. For the tiny budget, and limited release I applaud the film makers. They did a really great job with very little. It's definitely worth a watch. Premiered ar FrightFest UK in 2014.

I ended up hating it.

I saw the low ratings and decided to give it a shot anyway. It's the kind of movie that has the potential to give us situational horror instead of just another gore-fest. I like character driven movies if they can deliver compelling characters and an interesting story. Sadly Dead Within just doesn't deliver. On any front.

As another reviewer mentions: It isn't a Zombie flick. He's right. It is the result of somebody having the idea to make a Zombie movie but not having any real cash to spend. Basically: "We can't afford the costs of having a horde of Zombies in our movie so we will basically shoot most of it in one small set with only 2 actors, and the story will be about the people trying to survive and not about the Zombies."

Unfortunately the creators of this micro-budgeted waste of time make the same mistakes as so many other low-budget filmmakers: They seem to have hired actors because they would work cheap instead of hiring them because they can act.

I don't want to mislead you into thinking that the acting is the only bad component of this movie though. The direction and editing are lousy too. Camera-work is not terrible but it certainly doesn't add anything to the viewing experience. It's shaky and hand-held low-budget stuff. The writing, if you can call it that is unoriginal and tells a disjointed story with way too many flashbacks. The ending is pretty much NOT a surprise. Despite having four credited writers, two of them being the lead actors, it feels mostly improvised. There isn't much in the way of special effects and what there is is pretty amateur. The "Zombies" are basically people with black contacts. Those contacts, some gauze and some black "blood" that looks like used motor oil are the majority of the makeup effects.

The only bright light in the whole sorry effort is the sound. It SOUNDS creepy.

2 out of 10

Torture. Sinply torture. Artsy fartsy garbage. Lousy ambiguous ending. 90 minutes of 2 unlikeable creeps talking in a cabin. You never see the adversary. Just AWFUL.

Wow, was I watching the same movie?

First off, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I can't believe the previous users and reviews are calling this movie boring, slow, or that they have seen it before.

I thought the movie was suspenseful the entire time. Even though it was a limited cast, the acting was spot on and exactly what I look for in this genre.

If you want gore and nudity, you are looking in the wrong place, go re-watch one of the installments of Friday the 13th, which are all the same, so take your pick.

ALSO THIS ISN'T A ZOMBIE MOVIE!

The poster may be perceived as misleading, but we all should be able to get past that.

It could be just about anything outside the door, just like Cabin in the Woods. It's a sad story about two people who have lost everything. It frankly, was a lot more believable to me.

It's more like Open Water than Dawn of the Dead or Evil Dead.

I also really enjoyed discovering the prequel web series AFTER I had watched the film, it was a nice extension of the piece and hope they continue to post more episodes on the site.