The K
An underrated gem in the survival horror genre. The independent roots are obvious, but the movie has more suspense, drama and character building than most hundred+ million Hollywood productions these days.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
06/09/24
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For a film that was shot in such a short amount of time on a shoestring I think this is being unfairly panned. Yes it is dark (as in you can't see much sometimes), lines are sometimes muffled and it borrows heavily from 28 Days Later, however I thought the new zombie concept was interesting and the story had a good ending. Restraints considered not a bad effort at all.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/16/23
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What on earth possessed me to buy this - did I not see the other reviews? This was terrible. I was actually more entertained by my ironing that I was doing whilst watching this. I'm not even sure what happened. It only had about 3 characters in, all of whom were not the greatest actors , and there was literally no atmosphere and no graphics. It felt very black and white, and whether the lack of suspense was intentional given the zombie concept, I'm not sure. There was hardly even any action regarding these zombies anyway, other than a bit of blood dripping off some random peoples faces as they approached our main characters. I think there was an attempted twist at the end, but having read Wikipedia, it wasn't a twist at all, it's just that I totally became lost as to what was happening. The strong Scottish accents coupled with the dark setting and the shoddy camera work made this so difficult to get to grips with, and after an hour of attempting to understand it, my patience was running thin. I now understand that the story was revolving around two survivors of an infected village who were battling to stay alive. They are joined by a third later on and together they are trying to uncover the truth about each other's back stories and how they have lived through it all to date. That's not clear from watching it though and you'll not find it scary, entertaining or in the least bit credible. The only benefit it will have is making me appreciate my next movie that whole lot more.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
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Audience Member
The Dead Outside (Kerry Anne Mullaney, 2008)
Given (a) the explosion in zombie films in the last decade and (b) the rise of the aggressively-indie movement that paralleled it (admit it, you never want to see another mumblecore movie as long as you live), it was inevitable that someone would eventually cross these two genres to see what came out of it. While you wouldn't be terribly far off if you immediately yelled "Shaun of the Dead!" after reading that, enter British filmmaker Kerry Anne Mullaney, who took a budget, reportedly, of four thousand pounds and made... I'm sorry, I can't resist. The world's first, and hopefully last, zombiecore movie. The upside of this is that the best zombie films focus on the survivors anyway, and when you're focusing on as small a band of survivors as you do in this film (mostly two, with a third popping up later), you're already in indie-film nirvana. Mullaney internalized the best parts of the high-quality zombie movie and, um, the best parts (?) of hipster drama and came up with The Big Chill Part 2: Kevin Costner Rises from the Tomb. The downside is, well, The Big Chill Part 2: Kevin Costner Rises from the Tomb.
Plot: Daniel (Timelock's Alton Milne) is, as far as he can tell, the lone living human left in England as the movie opens. He is travelling through the countryside, trying to get away from the hungry dead while scavenging enough food and gas to keep himself and his car going. Until, that is, he finds a farmhouse, goes looking for food, and finds April (Sandra Louise Douglas in her only screen appearance to date), another survivor, who may be somewhat deranged. (It would be silly to use the term "socially awkward" when there aren't enough people left alive to be awkward around.) Daniel's not initially thrilled with April's company, but the farmhouse is defensible, there's strength in numbers, and hey, it's another living human being, so he sets up shop, and eventually the two become civil to one another. The dynamic changes when a third survivor, a nurse named Eleanor (Nine Lives' Vivienne Harvey), comes across the pair.
The more I think about it, the more potential the zombie drama has; indie drama filmmakers have been coming up with small-cast dramas set in confined spaces for decades. My Dinner with Andre, anyone? The only thing you need to change is the reason the cast can't leave the space. (Imagine what Buñuel would have done with that!) Mullaney is about halfway there in The Dead Outside, and some of the bad public reaction to the movie surely stems from the minimal use of the actual living dead here; zombies are mostly set decoration rather than menace when they're onscreen at all, and gore is even harder to find in this film. But the movie is certainly not perfect; its budgetary constraints show in a number of places (most notably in the sound mix; I don't know if this movie was DTV, but if it received a theatrical release, it's possible the big-screen sound was better and much of the problem with it when I watched it on Netflix was due to sound transfer woes, so I'm trying to give it the benefit of the doubt). Then-I'm getting slightly into spoiler territory here, though I can't imagine anyone reading that synopsis didn't grok this immediately-the handling of the love-triangle aspect of the film is...not all it could be. (We don't want to get too far into spoiler territory.) Not to say what's here isn't decent, but it seemed to me an angle that Mullaney and co-writer Kris R. Bird could have gone a lot deeper than they did there.
Do you get the idea from reading this review that I'm torn on this movie? You're right. I've been turning it over in my head for quite a while now and still haven't reached a verdict on whether I even liked it or not yet-but the fact that I'm still thinking about it is certainly worth something. So I'm left with giving it the gentleman's C, though knocking it up half a star for still being on my mind after all this time, and saying "let the viewer decide". You could go either way on this one. ***
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/11/23
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Audience Member
Unengaging and unintelligible. The audio and video try to be gritty, but it just ends up a mess.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/12/23
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Audience Member
While the DVD case displays multiple awards and/or nominations, this is one of the most poorly made films I have ever seen. From shaky cameras and amateur editing to a soundtrack that over powers dialogue, this movie is simply insufferable.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
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