COLIN **** UK 2008 Dir: Marc Price 97 mins
Colin arrives home shaken, dazed and numb. Blood soaked hammer in his hand and a rather nasty bite wound on his arm. The zombie apocalypse is in full swing and the poor guy just got tagged. If that wasn’t enough, as he’s cleaning up he gets attacked and bitten again by his zombified housemate and after much slipping around in blood he manages to kill him with a few stabs to the cranium with a kitchen knife.
Colin then succumbs to the infection and after a pretty hideous time of it reanimates, falls out of his living room window and shuffles off. We follow him as he stumbles around working out how to zombie, we see him as he joins in with other Z’s on his first feed and rejoice with him when he makes his first kill. Along the way poor Colin is mugged by the uninfected for his shoes but is rescued by his sister and, after a scuffle and an unfortunate mishap, wonders off on his way. As we follow him we run into a few siege scenarios where the uninfected are trying hard to survive and fight but with very little success. We come to a house that has been overrun with only a lone female survivor who Colin is somehow compelled to follow. Taking refuge at a pub with a seemingly friendly landlord she ends up in deeper shit then she was before, Colin moves on. He stops and stares intently at certain street signs and landmarks like they mean something to him almost like a pre programmed urge is drawing him in a certain direction but again is stopped. This time he is kidnapped by his sisters’ husband and taken to his childhood home where they hope seeing his mother will spark some recognition, it doesn’t. Back on his way again he (inadvertently) joins a horde of zombies just as they are attacked by a group of survivors using sling shots firing razor blades and make shift grenades. Many of the horde are destroyed and Colin suffers severe damage but manages to get away. A few of the survivors are bitten and the rest of the group are left to draw straws as to who has the misfortune to dispatch the infected and they basically have to beat them to death. The film ends with Colin reaching the last place he remembers before he was infected and a flash back to his last thoughts. Marc Price (Director) shot this film on a Panasonic Mini DV Camcorder and edited it on his home PC, in total the film took 18 months to complete. The zombies were recruited mostly through the medium of social media and many of them played multiple characters and did it for free which I’m sure helped to keep costs down. On the cover the film boasts that it was made on a budget of £45, I don’t know how true this statement is. It is defiantly low budget but done brilliantly. Colin is played by Alastair Kirton and he does a tremendous job. With very little dialogue he makes Colin a really likeable zombie and not in a stupid, mushy way like some do. His little quirks like stealing an MP3 player off a victim as they’re eaten (complete with their ear) just makes you really fond of him. I actually felt sorry for him quite a number of times. I’m not ashamed to admit that I absolutely adore this film and have as much fondness for this as I do for any of George Romero’s classic zombie movies. I have read some very damning reviews of Colin though which I categorically disagree with. They say there is no plot and that due to the lack of dialogue it is boring and goes nowhere. I just think that it is a different take on the genre. There are no heroes, no massive explosions and no half dressed overly grateful blonde I’m afraid but to me it just proves how unnecessary that stuff is. If I was to be completely objective and go with my head I would rate this film with 4 stars because some of the acting is a little questionable at times but I’m not going to, I have to go with my heart and give it 5 stars. I can forego the dodgy acting purely for the make up, fake blood and effects used to create the zombies, especially Colin himself. I have seen bigger budget zombie movies with worse zombie make up then this. I feel that they really thought about this and didn’t turn everyone your bog standard green/blue colour. Colin, when first turned just looked slightly paler and as he starts to decompose you see his skin start to sag and thin, towards the end in a battle with some survivors a make shift bomb blows up right next to him taking half his face off. In conclusion this film might be a little bit wobbly in places, doesn’t have big names or dramatic explosions but it does seem to me to be how it could be if this actually happened over here. I know one thing though I might love Colin but if I met him I’d run in the opposite direction!!
Review by Sarah Budd