The Killing Strain

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!!!

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 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

I love a good zombie film, great bit of escapism, most times it makes for good viewing, even the B grade variety are OK to watch for a laugh. But this horror of a film is as bad as a B grader will get! Where do they get these 2 bit actors from? no not the people that act the zombie roles. The blood and guts parts are OK, but that's where it stops, the acting is so poor it nearly turned me into a brain dead zombie! And damn that script is horrible, and yes the directing is not much chop either. Should you watch it? sure why not, but be warned it is crap, but it is a great film to remind you of better films from the past, or hopefully better one's to come.

A very solid 1 out of 10

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.