Directed By: Marc Price
Starring: Alastair Kirton, Daisy Aitkens, Kate Alderman
Trivia: Over 100 actors and friends worked for free playing multiple roles to increase the number of on-screen zombies and humans
Most zombie movies are told from the survivor’s perspective, showing mankind’s (sometimes futile) attempt to evade the flesh-eaters and remain among the living for at least another day. Colin, an ultra-low budget 2008 UK movie, provides a different point-of-view, following a young man who has recently “turned”, and telling us his story.
Colin opens with the title character, played by Alastair Kirton, arriving home after making his way through what we assume was all hell breaking loose in the city. Unfortunately, he’s been bitten on the arm, and to make matters worse, his roommate Damien (Leigh Crocombe), already one of the walking dead, attacks Colin from behind, tearing a chunk out of his neck.
Badly injured, Colin dies from his wounds, but doesn’t stay that way for long. We spend the rest of the movie tagging along with our zombie hero as he staggers around town, occasionally recognizing buildings and street signs, yet completely unaware of what he has become.
Arguably the best scene in Colin is when the title character dies, only to return a short time later. After being bitten by Damien, Colin sits on his kitchen floor, weak from the loss of blood. The action then fades to a series of shots showing him waiting to die. Things go out of focus as he struggles for life, and though we can faintly hear the chaos outside, it grows quiet in Colin’s flat. Then, he dies, and eventually, the camera closes in on his remains, as he once again shows signs of life. He stands up and, with a vacant stare, looks at his reflection in some glass. Colin doesn’t wake up hungry for flesh, like so many other cinematic zombies. Yet as the night turns to day, and he still can’t figure out how to leave his house, he gets more aggressive, finally freeing himself by stumbling backwards and falling out a window.
I was concerned going in to Colin, and wondered if it would be able to sustain such a one-sided story over its entire length. But each time there was a lull, something happened to pull me back into the film (my favorite sequence involves an overrun “safe house”, where the residents were in the process of making a zombie film when the apocalypse reached their front door). In the end, Colin proved a unique motion picture, and I enjoyed the view it provided from the “other side of the fence”.
No comments:
Post a Comment