Review: COLIN

 First up and easily gaining top plot in the cemetery is:-

COLIN (2008) UK 1hr 37mins

Writer/Director:- Marc Price

This eerie British indie zombie film shot mostly in and around London begins with nothing but the sound of gunfire and car alarms over the opening titles. A suitably freaked out Colin (Alastair Kirton) brandishing a claw hammer bursts into his house and tries to clean himself up in the kitchen. Revealing a large, deep and oozing bite mark on his forearm, he tries to stem the blood flow as his zombified housemate jumps him and takes a chunk out of the back of his neck, adding to his bite collection. A zombie apocalypse is in full swing and Colin is one of many joining the undead hordes. We follow him on his journey from living to dead to reanimation and beyond. He certainly does have a tough time of it, watching him writhe in agony and despair brought back some fond if slightly painful memories of my own passing!! After finally ceaseing to be under a pile of coats he reanimates and subsequently shuts himself in his living room (rookie mistake). He spends his first 8 hours pinging off the walls of his apparent prison before making his comic escape by falling out of the open window that had been there all along. This is when things really pick up. We follow Colin as he takes his first bite of human flesh (I do believe my stomach just rumbled), revel in his glory when he makes his first kill and stands up to the living when they obstruct him. On his travels Colin encounters a couple of entertaining subplots involving the living trying to survive. He wonders into a large house that is being overcome by a large horde of zombies all picking off the fighting residents in various gruesome ways. With only a single surviving female managing to jump out of a window, Colin emerges back out of the house following the poor woman to a fate that, should she have known what was going to happen would've probably decided to take her chances back in the house! Colin's story itself is a very sweet and personal one, as it progresses you discover that his sister is trying to find and help him to see if any of his humanity remains. After a tragic turn of events it becomes clear to Linda (Daisy Atkins) that Colin does not recall her or his childhood and the poor guy is abandoned (someone call the RSPCZ!!) in his family home, but Colin is getting memories or flashes of something that he recalls nearer to the time his was infected and so with these images burning a hole in his mind escape is a definite and he wonders off to the flat where it all started. Ambling through the city with other zombies Colin's group is attacked by the living. Using homemade grenades, axes and razor blade slingshots Colin is very nearly taken out early on, getting knocked to the ground by a carefully aimed slingshot and falling very close to a grenade just as it explodes!! We are diverted, however, to the fate of the living fighters that were bitten during their onslaught. Brutally turned on by their colleagues, as they are beaten to death the camera pans away to a very shaky and battered Colin as he slowly gets to his feet. A lot of his face is missing from the blast but he is still with us and heading with purpose to the place where it all started for him.

COLIN maybe low budget, director Marc Price reportedly filmed it on a Panasonic Mini DV camcorder and edited it on his home PC, but it truly is a superb film. It's so moving and really well thought out it deserves a whole heap of praise. The cast were all unknown with many playing multiple parts and all for free. Okay so the acting is not always up to scratch but it has so much heart and affection whilst also being a tragic love story and ticking many boxes on the brutal horror scale too. The star of the show is Alastair Kirton as Colin who manages to pull off a likeable... nay, loveable yet ferocious character with Colin that is fantastic to witness. On the cover of the film it boasts of being made on a budget of 45 quid, now I don't know how accurate that statement is but that is pretty impressive. The camera work is often shaky and a bit gloomy but no worse than others. However, the practical FX and make up are first rate on that kind of budget. There are some great messy blood and guts scenes, the texture of Colins skin changes as the film goes on with his face after the blast looking proper gruesome. The gunshot noises actually sound like gunshots and not pop guns and the soundtrack, although sparse is really effective. It has some nice little nods to Romeros movies especially 1985's DAY OF THE DEAD with Colin walking past a coffee shop called Sherman's Coffee and when he is being left to rot in his family home his mother covers the windows with newspaper. One at eye level stating as it's headline "The Dead Walk!!" which has been spotted in numerous zombies movies. There are some other clever hidden gems with some great book placement both in Colins house and at his girlfriends flat so keep an eye out for them and see if you can guess the relevance. It's definitely one that warrants multiple viewings and I have returned to this on many occasions. It is a wonderful indie project that follows a guy just as he is about to die, where many zombie movies would choose to end this is where we begin. This is something we don't see a lot of and I for one have not seen one portrayed as well as this. I urge whoever has not seen this to seek it out immediately I believe it deserves Cult Classic status and should bring Colin himself out as the new zombie poster boy along side the likes of Bub, Freddy and Billy Butcherson! This, of course, scores the full five brain rating!!