Zombie films are the one subgenre of horror that receives the most fanfare and has varying degrees of exploration within its unique universe. There is not a one size fits all approach; some interpretations have shown them as bumbling monsters with no sense of intelligence - while others are fast and robust machines of carnage. The one common denominator for viewers is that all these stories share a gnawing sense of macabre nightmare-fuel filling their senses watching these celestial beings devour human flesh. Zombie With A Shotgun misses the mark by a long mile being undone by the lack of polish and purpose with each department involved in the filmmaking technique. Not one area rises above the low bar of below-average rendering a tortuous exercise for all the innate human senses. It is hard to believe that anybody on the cast and crew can look at this as an achievement or something worth celebrating.
Storytelling depends on how hard someone is willing to work in order to understand its basic mechanics. Random moments of characters and events being interjected in the opening minutes that are just confusing on a narrative level. The basic premise is that a man named Aaron, with a mysterious infection is being tracked by bounty hunters, police, and individuals working for a pharmaceutical company. The virus lends itself to being a precursor to the life of a zombie but yet Aaron carries a special genome that renders him somewhat impervious to the serious health implications. The big pharma company wants to use that rev and based off a medicine off his genome to rake in big profits and keep infected individuals hooked to them for life. Took the equivalent of my brain having to do a 300-pound bench press just to connect those elements together; the editing jarringly goes between flashbacks and current day events to introduce information but yet is never able to make it congruent to the overarching plot. Characters are introduced without understanding the connection they share with the main character or sinister plot. This is not taking into account the various manners the technical design renders the film a glorious death.
No vestige of polish about the way camera angles are staged, images are photographed, sound design or visual relevancy is present. The lighting in some scenes literally blinds your eyes because no person had the energy to go back and readjust positioning. When characters shoot a gun, the screen shakes with a weird impact judder and some laughable fake bullet effects. At times, extreme close-ups are taken the most extreme obstructing the faces of characters in certain frames. Cheap makeup effects make even the most distinguished signs of a zombie infection look like hand-drawn tattoos and dried portions of leather stapled onto one’s skin. The element of the production that takes the cake for being the most glaring downfall of the film is the sound design. Some lines of dialogue sound straight off the bus of obvious dubbing or like the sound is coming through someone horrible phone connection; I stand amazed that a person with a beating heart heard this through a set of headphones and thought this was the perfect mix to bring onto the final pieces of the film.
Using the word “tortuous” to describe the experience of watching any film is never something I take no enjoyment in as a critic, but this film demands that dubious distinction. Zombie With A Shotgun takes away the precious time you could have spent watching a much better film and harbors no benefit in traveling down its below-average infected rabbit hole.
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Victims and Villains is written and produced by Josh "Captain Nostalgia" Burkey. Music by Yuriy Bespalov & Beggars. You can now support us on Patreon. Help us get mental health resources into schools and get exclusive content at the same time. Click here to join today!
