Ok, this movie couldn’t have seemed less promising: “A woman running from her past is trapped between a zombie outbreak and warring militia groups.” Great. But it turns out, this is a more of a flawed gem… deeply flawed in some ways but also very well done in others.
Inside of the first few minutes it became apparent this was a little better than that. The acting and dialog seemed good, somehow. Cliche’d ominous background news reports about a viral outbreak are downplayed and handled well for something we’ve seen so many times before. The couple goes on a 5-day canoe trip and then quickly fall to arguing, and for a little while, this turns into one of those movies that kills time by having a couple negotiate their relationship onscreen for the viewers—my favorite thing—before the canoe capsizes, one’s leg is broken, and they must take to land to try and find help. And then the zombie movie starts.
And, it’s a pretty good zombie movie, actually, with one major failing: it came after The Walking Dead. We’ve already seen tough-as-nails bands of scrappy survivors, but will-played and with some occasional real depth and character development, battle each other and the remains of the cops and military. If not for having seen it before, I’d have said this was really good. As it is, it could have stood as one of the better episodes of The Walking Dead. In fact, in some ways it feels like a TV pilot, but in a good way. Would have been a great pilot of a derivative show. If The Walking Dead hadn’t existed, this would have been worth recommending. It’s better than “Fear The Walking Dead”, and, I actually kinda liked that.