The Night Eats the World

A man gets caught in an apartment as the zombie apocalypse kicks off. He is safe, but alone.

Now I would start of by saying this is very well made. The production, camera work and acting is all great. I quite like it when films shrink down the scope to a few rooms. I like everything about this film, except having to sit through it.

The underlying themes of this film is companionship and boredom. The film demonstrates this very well. But in doing so makes for a very lonely, boring film.

Watching a man slowly lose his mind from loneliness is not particularity engaging.

There is no survival aspect, no action.

This is a very quiet, considered, hipster film. There is nothing wrong with that and I am glad the people who enjoyed it, enjoyed it. I can see why they did, but this is not the experience I want when I put a zombie movie on.

For starters, the zombies are totally, utterly mute. Believe or not, it's quite scary! In the real world, a simple cough would get anybody killed in an instant... More generally, one of the most powerful features of this movie is the strength of the overwhelming silence: in the streets, buildings, cars, rooms, hallways... Gone is the human agitation we have grown so used to!

Then, the setting in beautiful Paris, downtown-style. Lots of nice Haustmanian buildings. This comes in sharp contrast to the horror that awaits our character at virtually every corner.

The story fits on a simple sheet of paper, but the interest of this movie lies elsewhere. As some reviewers have described it before, it's about survival of the worst kind. I found myself planning what actions the "hero" should be taking to survive, ahead of him and, ticked, he went through each of them! In this regard, it is a pretty consistent movie which feels quite real.

My biggest complain is about the ending, something that a lot of French movies typically fail to do properly (just like the Americans and Asians, but for some other reasons): there is absolutely no closure to the storyline, far from it. I won't get into the details here, but please be warned that you will be left with a virtually limitless number of possible endings for this movie, way too many in my opinion to feel comfortable with it.

For what little it would take to make this film they really added a fun little film to what is typically an expensive and elaborate genre. For me all the points go to this.

While the writing isn't bad, it's also not great. But the aforementioned simplicity may also have been very limiting.

Top 50 Zombie films of all time, which may not sound like much but that's better than 95% of the zombie films out there so not bad really.

If you like Indy horror thriller films I would reccomend this one. While it's not as good as the likes of Afflicted or Spring, it's still a fun little addition to the genre that I would likely watch again at some point just because I am big fan of the post apocalyptic genre as a whole.

The curiously titled The Night Eats the World is a french zombie movie, though to appeal to the masses was filmed in English.

It tells the story of a man who falls asleep at a party only to wake up to a zombie apocalypse. If you're expecting an action packed bloody zombie movie, this simply isn't for you.

The movie takes a simple and rather realistic approach, namely one man alone and what he does to pass the time while the world around him turns to chaos.

Early on I was impressed, it was looking like this might be a likeable zombie affair but sadly the quality dips and it falls into the grindy repetitive and excessively depressing category.

The film has its moments but when the credits roll you'll likely be very aware that this movie will be gone from your memory within a week. It's all just so very underwhelming and ultimately goes nowhere.

I'd say nice try, but I'd be lying.

The Good:

Has its moments

Original take on a waning sub-genre

The Bad:

Rather dull

Goes out with a fizzle not a bang

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Lonliness causes insanity? Guess I'm a lunatic

Everyone needs a zombie friend.

The poster and description don't really sell this movie correctly. They sort of hint at this bloodbath zombie world. And while there are hints of that, it is much more of a slice of life drama and psychological study if anything.

There are obviously zombies but not they are not the main focus. There are hints of The Omega Man in here but I think it's much more thoughtful, it tries to look at what life would actually be like.

The film is slow and there are like 40 lines of dialogue in the whole movie, it might even be less. This doesn't make it bad or anything but it does make some parts drag ever so slightly.