Cannon Fodder

CANNON FODDER is yet another in a long line of all-too-familiar zombie stories with a military backdrop. The difference is that this one's an Israeli entry in the genre, and it's technically a student film, given that it's the product of a thesis project. Sadly, it's as dumb and derivative as any other zombie B-movie of recent years you could mention, with the different setting doing little to assuage feelings of familiarity and boredom.

The 'heroes' are a group of Israeli soldiers battling the undead. The action is cheaply staged throughout; there's a lot of it, but with none of the expert choreography you'd hope for in this type of film. Indeed, it all seems rather slapdash. It is quite gory, although the cheesy CGI blood spray effects look like they were created on the director's brother-in-law's laptop.

The cast is pretty weak and the characters remain unlikeable throughout. The unusual setting is in this film's favour, but politics is kept strictly to the background here in favour of your routinely staged zombie action scenes. Israel needs to do better than this if it wants to make its mark on the horror scene.

"Cannon Fodder" is the title of the original 2013 Israeli release. "Battle of the Undead" is the more appropriate title of the 2014 North American release, with updated CGI effects. Made with all the sophistication of a movie-of-the-week on the SyFy channel, this practice film is the same old last stand of a few humans vs. lots of zombies. Though set in Lebanon with Israeli soldiers tracking Arab terrorists, the story is pretty apolitical. Enemies or not, the living quickly team up to fight their undead foe. The more surprising content is the homophobic and racist locker room banter between the two grunt soldiers. But the storyline and dialog are just an excuse for the action, and the action is pretty lame. The military tactics are amateurish, the fight sequences are poorly staged and edited, and the horror is clichéd. This movie misses a couple of good opportunities for an ending; like the undead, it keeps going longer than it should.

So this comes off as a student film as another reviewer has stated. But then again any movie with a low budget can be considered a student film I guess. And horror is always a good place to start if you don't have a lot of money to spend, but want something that probably will attract a lot of people (or zombies for that matter).

Considering everything (money, time, "actors"), this isn't that bad. But it's obviously not good either, drifting off, not really having a good script and being failed in general by direction and cinematography at times. If you are a friend of horror movies, you might not mind too much, but in general you're not missing out on much, if you skip this

The dreadful "hey, let's make our very own zombie movie" epidemic spreads itself much faster than any actual apocalyptic zombie virus ever could. If you're a young and aspiring, but largely untalented director nowadays, all you have to do is write down the five page scenario of a zombie flick and set aside $10 for some lousy digital gross-out effects! And yet for some reason, I always get tricked into watching yet another one, and I'm sure many fellow true genre fanatics with me. In case of "Cannon Fodder" I thought it would be worth a look because it's made in Israel and links back to the current armed conflicts over there, but it predictably turned out to be the same nonsense in a different language. The supposedly retired (figures...) Special Forces commander Doran is sent on a mission, along with three highly trained soldiers, to hostile Lebanon territories in order to capture and bring back the dangerous #3 Hezbollah leader. It rapidly turns out to be a suicide mission, as their target is a scientist who developed a virus that turns innocent people into flesh-craving zombies. "Cannon Fodder" seriously lacks originality and blatantly steals numerous elements from George A. Romero's "Day of the Dead" and several other classic genre milestones. The main characters, Commander Doran and his Special Ops Team, are walking-talking stereotypes and the fact they speak Hebrew doesn't change a thing about this. Writer/director Eitan Gafny doesn't bother to create a brooding, unsettling atmosphere and seemingly doesn't want us to have sympathy for any of the characters (including the totally innocent Lebanese population). The extreme gore and excessive bloodshed is painful to watch as a genuine horror fan, since it's all computer-generated garbage that didn't require any cinematic craftsmanship. I will – once again – make a note to myself NOT to watch anymore zombie flicks.