THE HORDE 2010
Claude Perron (Aurore), Jean Pierre Martins (Ouessum), Eriq Ebouaney (Adewale), Doudou Masta (Bola)
Directed by Yannick Dahan, Benjamin Rocher
The Short Version: Slickly directed, but puerile zombie opus has absolutely zero plot and atrocious dialog. Lots of gore, a massive amount of bullets fired from magical guns that never run out of ammo and a record breaking number of expletives will be enough to endear this ridiculous movie to those who embrace films with hyper camerawork and lots of random action scenes.
A group of vengeance seeking cops team up with the drug dealers they intended to kill when a sudden zombie plague breaks out. Trapped in a high rise, the unlikely and unlikable team snort up a lot of China White and do battle with a horde of marathon running zombies.
As slick and polished as this patience thinning flick looks, it's yet another new and awful horror movie, only this one hails from France, a country that has been creating some ferociously mesmerizing terror tales in recent years; unfortunately, this isn't one of them. Nearly everything about this movie stinks. It's also another film that's been getting a lot of inexplicably positive notices. But upon closer inspection, you'd swear the script was written by Robbie Z and directed by Bruno Mattei. Containing a laughable string of exaggerated instances of jingoism and other examples of macho meanderings, the movie also has an uncomfortable air of racism and a bit of misogyny thrown in for not so good measure. In its defense, though, the one (live) female cast member is as tough as any of the men, but the overall tone is kind of insensitive.
Among the absurdities and 'hand down the chalkboard' level of dialog exchanges, there's a near constant and senseless flood of expletives that grates on the nerves after the first few dozen 'F' bombs and the over reliance on referring to women as 'bitches'. Not to mention this motley clutch of wholly unlikable characters never seem to be able to stop yelling at each other and make these comically overblown faces complete with eyeballs threatening to pop out of their heads. In addition to the intelligible and concise dialog, the zombie outbreak, whose origins are never hinted at, nor explained seems to come out of nowhere. One other thing about the characters, even when they discover that shooting the dead in the head puts the zombies down, the cops and thugs are still content to unload all their bullets everywhere but in the noggins of the hyperactive corpses.
There's also more bullets fired here than probably all four RAMBO movies combined, yet no one ever reloads. It's only at the end that one of the gangsters mentions being out of bullets. Did I mention that not one person has any redeemable qualities in this vacuous excuse of a horror picture? The script (kind of) alludes to some minor political underpinnings, but never explores this area, instead preferring to squander any intelligent speeches on a near endless onslaught of action scenes that get nauseatingly old real fast. Frames are removed to make everyone move like they were in a silent movie. That's "cutting edge", I suppose.
Also, it seems ADHD has spread like a plague to the cinematographers of other countries as they can't seem to keep the damn cameras still, either. For a while now, the "You are there!" documentary feel has been "cutting edge" in American films and television shows for some time now. In THE HORDE, it's difficult to ascertain what's happening sometimes what with the camera zigzagging all over the screen. In between all the blazing guns, bullets flying and chaotic camerawork, there's a handful of close quarters combat sequences where our "heroes" trade punches with the undead. A lot of people may find this stimulating, but it was all stupid and pointless since there's no one to identify with and literally zero story, or reasoning for what's happening. The dead just come to life for whatever reason.
No doubt the single most hilarious scene comes when the brute cop of the bunch decides to fend off 'The Horde' single-handed. What follows is this character football tackling dozens upon dozens of rampaging dead. Hopping atop the roof of a car, he begins shooting and chopping away at the zombies surrounding him. For whatever reason, the hundreds of zombies take what seems like five interminable minutes before they finally grab him and pull him down. The most oddly disturbing scene would have to be when the men surround a zombie female and taunt her/it with rape and other sexual indignities. It's a bizarre segment that seems perplexing for it even being in the film. Like much everything else, it adds absolutely nothing to the already non existent narrative.
The gore and gunfire are plentiful, if only there was something resembling a story, or even remotely engaging characters. Feasible dialog would have been nice, too. However, some fans will eat this movie up for the very same reasons I couldn't keep it down. As it is, THE HORDE is yet another in a long line of seemingly neverending and brainless zombie movies with no apparent end in sight. With rigormortis setting in quickly on this sub genre, it would be nice if producers and film-makers would finally let sleeping corpses lie for a while.
This review is representative of the IFC DVD