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John (Jonathan Flanigan) and Jennifer's (Beverly Hynds) car breaks down
in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, and she gets freaked
out when she thinks she sees a corpse lieing in the woods not far from the
car, and even more when the supposed corpse is gone. John is less worried,
but then he goes into the woods to take a piss, and is bitten by something
... John's bite as such wasn't anything serious, but weirdly enough, his
condition worsens. Trying to walk back to civilisation, John and Jennifer
eventually find a summer home that seems to be abandoned this time of the
year, where they decide to put up house to take care of John. However,
John's condition continues to worsen, up to the point where he has no more
heartbeat. Now that's a bad sign by any standards, but weirdly enough,
John is not dead, is still able to think, move, walk, talk. It's just that
he's slowly overcome by some sort of numbness - and he slowly starts to
decay. Jennifer takes John to a hospital, but there, the doctor's
reaction is to panic and call security. Jennifer and John make it out
though and decide to continue to hide out in the abandoned summer home. John
feels a sudden craving for human flesh, and eventually, he is so overcome
by this craving that he bites Jennifer. He doesn't kill her or eat her up
whole or anything, he just bites her - which is a bad thing, because it
was a bite that gave him his condition, and sure enough, Jennifer's heart
stops to beat before long, she starts to decay and feel numb. Like John,
Jennifer starts to feel a craving for human flesh, but she is stronger in
fighting it - which only worsens her condition of course. And this gets
John worried, so he orders pizza and kills the pizza guy (Jason Schwartz),
just to feed Jennifer. She doesn't approve though, doesn't want to have to
kill to stay alive (or rather undead). John goes out night after night,
and one day, Jennifer sneaks after him - and witnesses him brutally
killing some campers and feeding on them. Seeing the hopelessness of her
situation - she doesn't want to kill but needs human flesh to survive -,
Jennifer shoots herself dead - I mean really dead. John realizes she's
right of course, and to not have to kill anymore, he chains himself to a
post int he basement, but all to no avail. Also, he isn't as determined as
Jennifer was to commit suicide - so when a police patrol stops by to
investigate all the gruesome killings that have happened of late, he
willingly provokes them to shoot him. A zombie film done as a
love story - now that's a novel twist ... and while it sounds stupid as a
concept, it actually works mainly thanks to a well-written script that
cleverly circumvents cheesy spots, and that doesn't make a fool of the
concept, instead treats the story with the seriousness it deserves. Add to
this a couple of competent leads and a pretty nice makeup job depicting
the slow decay of the characters, and you've got a pretty good film -
however not a perfect one, because on a directorial level, Carl Lindbergh
just fails to bring the macabre elements of his own script to full bloom,
using predominately soft lights and a warm colour-chart to mar any creepy
atmosphere the film would have deserved. That said, the film is anything
but a trainwreck, it's still pretty good actually. It just could have been
great, but as it is it merely shows promise.
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