Before Dawn

Okay, well first of all I have go to put out a warning to anyone buying this movie from the DVD cover, as I did, don't look at the cover and get your hopes up! You will be sorely disappointed. On the cover you see a man standing alone with a rifle and a smoking city in the horizon. This is not even in the movie, nor does it have anything remotely to do with the movie. But it gets better. There is also a really cool looking zombies there in the gash, along with a whole army of zombies behind it, again, not there in the movie. False advertisement at its best.

That being said, let me just say right away that despite this false advertising and cheap tricks to lure people into buying the movie, then "Before Dawn" is actually quite good once it gets up in speed and pace. The movie was actually quite enjoyable. The movie is rather slow at getting into gear and tends to drag on and on without getting anywhere. Well, right up until Meg (played by Joanne Mitchell) goes jogging, then things pick up pace and gets interesting.

There is only a handful of zombies in the movie, but the make-up on these was actually quite good. Now, anyone familiar with my reviews will know that I am not a fan of agile and fast-running zombies, as the ones in "Before Dawn" are. It is just not my thing. But still, the effects and make-up on the zombies here worked really well. One thing, aside from the running, that I didn't appreciate about the zombies in this movie, was the predatory growling sounds that they emitted, it was just too odd and misplaced.

And there isn't a lot of people in the movie, so there is a lot of weight on the shoulders on those on the screen, and they did good jobs with their given roles. Thumbs up for that.

As for the ending of the movie, well... I will not spoil anything here by saying how it ends. But it is one of those types of endings that you will either love or hate. I didn't really appreciate it and found it to be a bit too cliché and predictable.

"Before Dawn" is a great addition to any zombie aficionado's zombie movie collection. It is enjoyable and has a good amount of violence and just enough gore to keep even most gorehounds happy. Britain does spew out a good amount of enjoyable zombie movies.

Someone urged me to watch this movie because they had seen it at a festiival a few years ago, but I couldn't find it anywhere, luckily a stream into UKs Horror Channel provided through Film On allowed me to see this.

The guy that makes the movie is the same guy who made a Bait which I really enjoyed, but this is a whole different ballgame. For some unknown reason the cast were not recorded (sound) at the time of shooting, yes they say the lines but clearly no sound guy was tasked with recording actual audio. Therefore all that is done post filming, I believe they call it adr. This was awful there is no background sounds, everything deathly quiet. Worse still the performances because of the soap opera style approach to horror feel removed. Don't get me wrong performances are good, the film is quite good because it's a thinking zombie movie, it's different. But this whole sound issue, it does not allow you to fully engage in the film. You just simply don't feel that level of attachment. Because I could not get into the zone, the film simply does not work for me on any level.

A couple rent a cottage in Yorkshire as an attempt to rekindle their failing marriage. For 45 minutes you are trapped in that cottage with them and nothing happens except for an argument about the great wall of china. This is not character development.

When the zombies turn up they bark and snarl like Yorkshire terriers. To make them look jerky they simply removed some frames from the film. This looks terrible. Highlights of the zombie action include a 10 minute long chase scene around a land rover with hilariously amped up action music as though something exciting is happening.

This is a poor effort with non-existent pace, illogical reactions and mediocre acting. The ending is laughable too.

There is some meat to the domestic drama of this film. When the zombie part starts, the shifts pulls for emotions in an interesting fashion. That being said, the film then follows ideas that have been done previously. Well acted with some decent directing, I enjoyed this experience.

This wasn't really that much of a zombie film until the ending. But taken as a whole it reminded me a lot of Black Summer the series which I really like, it just the last few minutes. That surge at the end saves it from a 2 rating and raises it to a 4/10.