What a disappointment. This movie starts off like it’s going to be a cut above, with a really unique idea that, for about the first half of it, hold up well: following a car breakdown en route to a remote airport trying to flee the country after a zomview apocalypse, a Las Vegas stripper with nothing but a handbag and a vial of cocaine is trying to cross the desert on foot in platform shoes, relentlessly pursued by a single zombie.
The conceit is wonderful, and not something I’ve seen before: one person being followed great distances by one zombie, like a post-“The Walking Dead” take on “Duel”. There’s some predictable sequences but by and large I found it pretty charming. For half the movie.
Unfortunately, the movie loses the thread so completely that I assumed it was an anthology film, or had segments directed by totally different directors. The character of the story changes completely and in ways that are just too much of a stress: after half the movie desperate to flee this pursuer who moves basically as fast as she does and doesn’t need to sleep, suddenly, it’s like a buddy comedy picture. For no reason, after she finally ensnares the zombie in a trap… suddenly she is friendly with it. She frees it, telling it like a pet, “You’re going to be good right?” and the sudden new friends trudge across the desert together, the zombie apparently no longer hungry. She even protects it from soldiers they encounter when they finally reach a road. Then, after a length zombified buddy picture sequence, she gets to the airport, where the movie changes again, into a fairly standard and in no way exceptional zombie movie. By that time, the zombie has for unexplained reasons laid down and “died” and is no longer even in the picture, and she decides, after such a long struggle to reach the airport, to stay behind, and go in search of her son, living with her sister in the suburbs somewhere, and the movie goes off in yet a third different direction.
That first half, though. I really liked it. A new idea with zombies, combined with the sort of survival picture I always like… it could have been a real gem. It’s a shame. I got so bored with the nonsensical buddy picture part and the trite zombie-picture-cliched last act, I’m not even sure I can give this a “bad but I liked it.” It just goes from mostly good to straight-up bad.