Silent Night, Zombie Night

Director - Sean Cain (Breath of Hate)
Starring - Jack Forcinito (Breath of Hate), Andy Hopper (Political Disasters), and Nadine Stenovitch (Roadkiller)
Release Date - 2009
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "This Christmas you are the holiday feast"
Format - BluRay (Personal Collection) (Stills from youtube clips)

Rating (out of 5):

     Last year I was about to watch Silent Night, Deadly Night and decided to look around on the ol www to see what I could find.  Due to the title being similar, I came across this little zombie flick.  The movie looked decent but I was not in the mood for this zombie filled film and went on to do a little research on the slasher flick I had originally wanted to look at.  A few months later I was getting an order together on amazon.com and found this on BluRay for $9.99.  Because it was that cheap I grabbed it and just threw it on the shelf and never touched it.  When December rolled around I jumped from Christmas movie to Christmas movie to avoid this one until I was in a zombie movie mood and finally threw it in.  

     The film does not have much on story.  Two cops, Frank and Nash, both love the same woman, Sarah.  However, Sarah is married to Frank.  To make matters worse is a zombie apocalypse has descended on L.A. during the Christmas season.  Nash was bitten, or shot, hell I don't know, in the foot and he is unconscious for several days.  While he is out, Frank wonders the neighborhood in search of supplies and survivors.  Frank comes across a family man living in the attic of his home, meanwhile, Nash awakens and goes out in to the neighborhood in search of his partner.  It is dark and the two cross paths, unfortunately, they assume the other is a zombie and fire on each other.  Nash is shot in the head and Frank takes a bullet to his side.  Frank assumes Nash is dead and rushes back to his home.  The man in the attic grabs Nash and takes him back to his loft and patches him up.  While Frank is home a group of survivors in a hummer drive by and they flag them down.  The group tells them that beside the slow moving zombies, there is also a pack of fast moving zombies that are part of scientific experiment gone wrong.  The group leave, but don't get too far.  They are attacked and only one survivors.  Frank is worried she may be infected and handcuffs her to the steel bars in the bathroom window.  When Nash comes to he heads back out to find Frank and comes across the pack of special zombies.  One gets in the house and bites the man in the attic.  He knows what will become of himself because he was bit and shoots himself in the head.  Nash is surrounded by the zombies and Frank arrives to save him.  The two shoot their way back to the apartment and run out of ammo.  With only one zombie standing between them and their home they decide to pistol whip the fucker and are bit in the process.  Knowing their fate they have Sarah put em down.

     This movie received a lot of positive feedback from the horror community, but I could not see what they are talking about.  I read multiple reviews claiming it was a better film than Zombieland and that the director "out-Romeroed Romero."  I don't see either one of those when I watch this flick.  Zombieland is a zombie comedy and there is nothing funny with this film and when it comes to zombies, Romero wrote the book and changed the way zombies were portrayed in cinema.  I don't see anything groundbreaking in this stereotypical zombie film.  The movie was not bad, but it was not good either and those allocations are false.  This is the type of movie that you watch only because you had never seen it before and will never watch it again.  The acting was surprisingly very good.  The stars of the film are mostly no bodies with a few cameos from cult icons; Lew Temple (The Devil's Rejects, Trailer Park of Terror), Vernon Wells (Weird Science, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior), and Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp, Dahmer vs. Gacy).  The special effects are nothing special.  Some scenes the zombies look ridiculous, while in other scenes they look great.  However, the wounds the survivors sustain look absurd.  At one point, Rose's character pulls Frank's shirt up to check on his wound and it looks like melted plastic had been placed on his side.  They should have left this scene out of the film.  The biggest flaw of this film is the story.  I have watched more low budget films than I care to count and a majority of them have a story to tell, unlike this one.  The story is utterly boring and leads to a predictable ending.  Nothing new or exciting is introduced in this film, just a zombie apocalypse and people trying to survive...as told countless times before.  I did, however, like the little nod to Reservoir Dogs that the director threw in the film.  When Nash is hurt, Frank throws him in the back seat of the car.  Nash then starts screaming and crying about how he is going to die in a similar fashion to Tim Roth's character in RD.    Finally, I was watching this film because it is suposed to be a Christmas themed zombie film.  The zombie part is true, however, the film does not feel like a Christmas movie.  I guess it is hard to get that holiday vibe in California, but with a little more effort it could have been pulled off.  Hell, Jack Frost did it.  Overall, this is one of those movie you don't want to buy because you will never watch it again.  If you can get it from Netflix of Redbox then grab it, otherwise leave it alone.