The Horde

When detective Mathias Rivoallan is found murdered by the gang led by the Nigerian Markudi (Eriq Ebouaney), detectives Jimenez (Aurélien Recoing), Aurore (Claude Perron), Ouessem (Jean-Pierre Martins) and Tony (Antoine Oppenheim) decide to revenge the death of his friend. The vigilantes plot bloodshed, executing Markudi, his brother Bola (Doudou Masta) and the other gangsters in the abandoned building where they are gathered. However, things go wrong when the watchman arrives and the violent gang subdues the quartet and tortures them. Meanwhile, the lookouts of the gang hear explosions, sirens and the weird sound of rabble. Sooner the survivors discover that the building is under siege of a horde of walking dead and the hungered zombies want to eat them. Ouesseem and Aurore team up with Markudi, Bola, Grego (Jo Prestia) and the veteran René (Yves Pignot) and together they have to fight against the zombies trying to find an exit from the building.

"La Horde" is an insanely gore and violent French horror film. The gore recalls "Braindead", but without the black humor of the trash cult movie of Peter Jackson. The plot is full of action, but none of the characters is likable. The origin of the walking dead is not developed and has only a minor explanation on television that mentions an epidemic. On the contrary of George Romero's slow zombies, in this flick they run like hell. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Legião do Mal" ("Legion of the Evil")

I have watched this film moments after seeing a low budget German zombie flick and so I could see the differences between the two immediately. While Rammbock was low budget, this one had lots of weapons and effects and plenty of gore; La Horde had superviolent gangsters and cops (the French kind, a la Luc Besson), the other one had painfully average people; the Germans had natural reactions, while the French were complete idiots; German film had believability while La Horde was ridiculous just when starting to like it. And so on and so on...

Bottom line: La Horde had the ingredients for a great movie. I was expecting (maybe that was my problem) a combination between From Dusk Till Dawn and Nid de Guêpes. It was neither, as the characters wasted bullet after precious bullet shooting zombies in the body (even if they noticed the only effective shots where legs and head) or shouting in anger and/or fear. And the thing is, in France, old men and young women are a lot scarier than zombies. Eriq Ebouaney was the highlight of the movie, but mainly because of his almighty blackness and acting, not his script lines.

The film has a frantic pace and the first scene is the discovery of a police officer found dead in a rubbish pit. At the funeral his colleagues vow to kill the men responsible and track them down to a condemned and abandoned tower block on the city outskirts. The raid isn't too successful and the police find themselves at the mercy of the violent gang members. However, something stirs outside in the night and within minutes all hell breaks loose. The cops and gang members must reluctantly work together if they want to escape from the tower block alive. There are one or two scenes of complete overkill and plenty of blood to keep zombie fans happy. Don't really know to refer to them as zombies or not but they are like the infected in 28 days later. The film only really slows down in the middle for a short period before heading to a bloody and violent conclusion.

Certainly one of the better zombie films to be released in the last few years and very enjoyable.

La Horde is probably the best action film of the year. It doesn't work as an out and out horror but it is a balls out insane action film. The plot in cops and criminals join forces in a tower block as the End of Days happens and the dead return as bloodthirsty aggressive zombies. If you like action brutal, bloody and violent then see this. The plot isn't anything original but this film has verve by the bucketload. The scares are good and the tension is slowly built higher and higher. The only complaint is that the ending isn't clever despite being different.

Go see it if you love robocop/28 days later/dawn of the dead.

Great fun.

A crew of cops and gangsters fight their way through a zombie apocalypse while interacting warily and sometimes violently with each other.

This is one of the best zombie movies I've seen in a while, it's surprising that I hadn't heard of it before. The zombies are the usual Romero type, although they do run instead of lurch at times. The usual zombie rules apply; shoot it in the head, and all that. The difference here is that several of the living engage in fist fights with zombies when a gun isn't handy, you don't see that very much. The fights tend to be quick, realistic and brutal. That was interesting.

The tension between cops and gangsters goes on until the very end, adding a bit of a twist to the plot. The acting is good, the production values high, and the special effects are good and gory. This isn't the backyard zombie movie your brother-in-law Cletus made with his camcorder and five drunken friends; it's a decently budgeted, well acted and somewhat original zombie movie with atmosphere.

I recommend this film to any zombie flick fan. It's in French, but there isn't that much dialog so the subtitles aren't obtrusive.