Crew/Production: Directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas, filmed in Budapest, adapted from Juan de Dios Garduno’s “Y pese a todo”.

Plot: Post zombie-esque outbreak in a winter rural town. We follow Jack (Jeffrey Donovan) and his young daughter Lu (Quinn McColgan) and estranged-friend/loner Patrick (Matthew Fox) as they live and survive in this isolated world.

Thoughts on the film:
• First act is very slow and boring – For most of the film, there’s only one white feral zombie about – so what’s the problem?! 😀
• For a drunken hobo, Fox is quite adept at survival! He has a fully stocked larder, ammunition and working snowmobile.
• He does the idiot-movie-tension move of crashing his vehicle despite being the only person on the road in a deserted area! Straight up Lori from the Walking Dead levels of stupidity!
• The film itself is more of a drama: Jack is overly protective of his daughter and blames Matthew Fox for the death of Fox’s wife, who is having auditory hallucinations due to his tremendous guilt. The reasoning for Jack’s over-protectiveness (Fox being a careless drunk) was kinda weak and unsatisfactory – it needed to be more fleshed out.
• The two ease tensions over a dinner and start laughing as they trade racial slurs (eg Japanese impressions). It’s unexpected and actually quite funny, and sadly one of the most memorable parts of the film!
• They add a woman into the mix late in the film, she doesn’t do anything, but their end goal was the same before they met her – get out of dodge – and the siege finale didn’t change anything….em… why didn’t you just like, leave straight away? They just get ready for the siege until nightfall. Contrived plot, that’s why!
• As I mentioned, for the final act, they have a zombie siege on their house, and I LOVE sieges! The fun part of zombie films is thinking what you’d do in the situation. The characters act dumb so the sequence has more peril. So Zombies are checking out the house – if the cellar is the safest place in the house, why not hole up in the cellar and ride it out until they fuck off? Ahhh – because the cellar’s actually not safe at all and Jack puts his daughter into harm’s way! Other silly things like not having your guns with you for a siege; and why not throw firecrackers at a different house. There’s no way that these zombies know to storm THIS particular house if they were streets away.
• These Zombie-esque beings are sensitive to sound (they’re pretty blind, hearing is how they hunt) so the survivors put on a music record. Straight out of Shaun of the Dead. The Zombies hate rock music? They must’ve been squares! The sequence is really out of jive with the rest of the film, but it’s appreciated.

Overall: Disappointing siege aside, the movie bets the house on being a character-driven story and falls short by a wide margin. We get sacrifice and self-sacrifice for no great reason, and not much action. Unengaging – avoid! BTW, if the final shot was on Matthew Fox’s eye zooming out with a dog beside him, it would’ve been great.