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Colin (2008)

Dir: Marc Price

Colin is one of the survivors of the zombie apocalypse, he fights to remain a survivor…and fails.

Colin is now one of the zombies in the zombie apocalypse.
This is his story……..

 

On the back of the publicity about its supposed budget (£45!) this pure independent, completely guerrilla, British zombie movie gained a distributor, festival play dates, pretty good press coverage and an eventual special edition DVD release.
All publicity is good publicity, despite arguments whether the £45 total was strictly accurate (whatever it was, the budget was indeed so low it makes an Andy Milligan movie budget look like the production budget for “Avatar”), but is there more to “Colin” that just a cost figure?

Opening with human Colin, carrying a bloodied hammer, being finally despatched into the hell of the undead “Colin” instantly shows the advantage and disadvantage of its budget and technical standing.
The one man video camera style of shooting (shot by director Marc Price who also edited, wrote and produced!) means we have an energy, an immediacy, and a right in the thick of the action feel to the movie, but it means we also have dubious lighting, fluctuating contrast and colour and too much damn shaking.
Thankfully though during this opening you get accustomed to this style and can at last settle into the picture, acclimatise yourself with its hit and miss aesthetic, and now fully enjoy the genuine talent, power and mastery over this, now worn to the bone, sub-genre that Price shows.

A small number of low budget zombie films have followed zombies as the main characters before, but never in what is otherwise a classic, shambling undead, action film setting.
Sure “Colin” has plenty of emotional drama (which what other ‘follow the zombie’ films tend rely on in totality) but if you flipped the perspective to the human characters the film basically plays like a gory, violent, kinetic zombie film like Romero’s or Fulci’s classic era titles.
Price has pulled off a superlative mix here; action zombie flick, and genuinely scary, emotional drama all at the same time.

As undead Colin staggers through the well handled and staged chaos and bloodshed we explicitly follow him as he eats his first mouthful of flesh, gets mugged for his shoes by survivors or just partakes in teeth gnashing battles with humans.
But, seeing as Colin is basically a mute, unemotional, character, this could get boring very fast in a 90 minute film and indeed it does just start to feel that way until the excellent screenplay, just at the right time, uses Colin in another way…this time as a stepping stone for the audience to reach numerous little vignettes (in which he often takes little or no direct action) involving various human survivors.
These little dramas also provide two utterly remarkable events…that of the first (at least from my view) genuinely scary, genuinely unsettling, zombie sequences seen for years.

Going for blunt realism Price suddenly throws us head-first into a small house, packed (nice to see so many extras here) with zombies, where a tiny group of people are battling to stay alive.
Forget any fantasy, purely done for thrills, moments of zombie ass-kicking that would have occurred in 99% of other zombie films during such a sequence as this, because here Price shows just how realistically hopeless such a set-up would be as normal, everyday, people armed simply with whatever crap they could find in the house, with nowhere to run, vainly try to fight off undead creatures that shrug off mortal wounds, can’t be scared away, can’t be reasoned with and that just keep on coming no matter what.
For the first time in, I would say, decades we have a zombie scene that truly scares you because as an audience you see how realistically hopeless it would truly be, how utterly futile your efforts would be, if you, yourself, was actually in such a situation.
And with bloodied, screaming, hopelessness that point is rammed home hard.

The other stand-out moment is one that I would love to fully go into but I can’t as it would spoilt it. But lets just say that Price delivers one of the most surprising, creepy, macabre, grotesquely unsettling sequences seen in a zombie film for a long time as, with a moment of superbly crafted, completely unexpected, shock he reveals to the audience what’s in the dark.
Great zombie acting, excellent and disturbing make-up work FX and astute staging means this sequence, that shows not all horror is strictly undead, should stick with you after the credits have rolled.

Acting ranges from the good to the very good with the main actor playing Colin, Alastair Kirton, doing an especially good job in a very tough role.
But thankfully there is no one here, given that this is mostly just friends and zombie film junkies doing it all for free, who is bad or detracts from the film.

The set-pieces are well done, well framed and cleverly made to look bigger than they probably are and although (as stated) the wobbly cam is sometimes too much Price, with the help of some surprisingly good and highly effective gore/make-up FX, sound effects and quick fire editing makes the numerous zombie attack scenes (including a pitched battle in a street with explosives) really work as nasty, brutal moments of horror.
And Price handles the emotional horror just as well as Colin meets up with his sister (nice turn by Daisy Aitkens) and family, during a grim but very well handled bit of tragic drama, backed wonderfully by the impressive soundtrack.

Belying the budget once again and deciding, as stated above, to be as much a zombie action film as an intense drama Price utilises some full on gore and violence to deliver the goods and much gut ripping, limb biting, eye gouging, head cracking is offered up by some nicely realistic (no day-glow blood here) FX work and pretty groovy zombie make-up. All done, in another unusual and welcome aspect, by crew made up of at least 50% women, including the head of department Michelle Webb.

So, with great personal skill, and with the impressive skills of those few others around him and backed by a good script, atmospheric score and solid acting, Marc Price ensures that “Colin” delivers as a full-bloodied, carnage filled zombie film, delivers as an unsettling scare movie and delivers as an emotional drama as well as we see life as we know it come to an end and as we eventually come full circle with the story of the unfortunate Colin…our tragic guide through hell.

Another gem, a truly independent and hard toiled for gem, in the crown of modern British horror that overcomes its budget and filming limitations to take its place proudly in the higher ranks, from various decades, of zombie cinema.