Saturday 29 March 2014

ZOMBIE 2024 review

 
Zombie 2024 is the highly anticipated follow-up to the acclaimed 2010 web series Return of the Blooksucking Nazi Zombies (which can be found as one of the extra features on the Cameo Media DVD of Jess Franco’s Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies). Howard Vernon, Dr Orloff and Dr Mabuse return in their struggle for world domination. Vernon is still in hot pursuit of Orloff, who is under strict orders from the mysterious Dr Mabuse not to fail in his mission yet again to have Vernon assassinated. Dr Orloff, who is notorious for his evil but shambolic experiments, has created an apparently new and improved android named Andros. Orloff requires a young woman to use in his latest experiment and commands Andros to find him one. But, to Orloff’s chagrin, Andros is ‘faulty’ – he has some human emotions. Will he able to complete his mission to find a beautiful Eastern European female disaster-free? Will Howard Vernon finally eliminate Dr Orloff, or vice versa? And there’s also the small problem of hoards of bloodthirsty zombies now running rampart across the continent to deal with...
Zombie 2024 was directed by ‘Mathis Vogel’ aka innovative and talented up-and-coming genre filmmaker Alex Bakshaev, and created and written by veteran scribe Robert Monell who has written for numerous books and publications including ‘European Trash Cinema’. This short film really is a polished, remarkable achievement, given the budget constraints (approx $300 USD) and limited resources. It both looks and sounds great, with an inventive use of attractive locations, vivid colours, visual effects and a wonderfully varied soundtrack, which flows from ambient to jazz to melodic guitar to menacing electronica nicely without ever sounding out of place or intrusive. Eurohorror aficionados will have fun spotting various homages to The Devil Hunter, Night of the Hunted, Burial Ground and more. Even the poster design is highly demonstrative of its creators’ reverence of the genre, combining both the vivid colours used in the film with that familiar, worn, ‘grindhouse’ look.  Zombie 2024 is a must-see short film, highly watchable and atmospheric and a perfect example of how so much can be achieved out of so little (and with much Hollywood fare now, it's the other way around).






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