Colin

I had not heard of Colin before being seeing it at the Flyway Film Festival's International Zombie Summit in October of 2009. I was intrigued by the poster art, and the film's rumored $70 budget - but mostly by the long overdue concept of telling this type of story from the inside out. You see, Colin is a zombie movie - but it's told from the zombie's point of view. A zombie named Colin.

The best zombie films often make us think about what it means to be Human. Since Romero established the tradition with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, zombie films are often allegories for their time, in that they say something about the current direction in which humanity is traveling. No one has really done this better than Romero, whose subtext is often social and political and speaks of The Big Picture.

But Colin teaches us more about The Big Picture by making us think of what it means to be human in the "little h" sense of the word; the idea of what it means to be a person, an individual, ourselves... It does this by showing what it means to Colin to be Colin.

In the opening moments of this film we watch our protagonist die with no real sense of who he is. He shortly awakens - undead - with even less of a sense of his identity than we have. Colin is reduced to a relentless core of need that is nameless - but that drives him on an obscure journey to reconnect with the phantom limb of his humanity. Along the way, scenes of mayhem unfold, some of which would feel familiar (such as the overwhelming and intense zombie siege inside the apartment building), but through the uniqueness of their approach come off as being told for the first time - the very freshness of these scenes should cause them to become legendary. However, as intense and enjoyable as these moments are, they often have little to do with Colin's story, which is gradually told through flashbacks both intimate and personal. It's in these qualities that I feel Colin finds its ultimate uniqueness and strength. It's a strength that may alienate Colin from fans of horror culture junk food, but is likely to win new fans who just like good movies, and enjoy a little nutrition when faced with so many empty calories.

In the world of horror cinema (and especially within the zombie sub-genre) it's not often that a film this quiet and unique gets made, and somewhat shocking when it gets noticed. The habitat of the horror film is frequently a crowded landscape of volume and violence, dominated by big-budget gore, homogeneous jump cuts and startling noises, remakes with no heart and no risk (and subsequently, no tension), all shouting through studio-mandated, gold-plated megaphones "LOOK AT ME!!! YOU ARE THE CONSUMER AND WE ARE THE EXPERTS AND YOU'LL WATCH ANYTHING WE MAKE EVEN WHEN WE INSULT YOUR VIEWING INTELLIGENCE". But Colin is just the opposite of this: Colin makes you feel like you are part of the story rather than having a story told to you - almost a Howard Zinn-esque "People's History of the Zombie Apocalypse". The story of Colin is told as if you - the viewer - actually matter.

Ultimately Colin - like its haunted score, written by Daniel Weekes and Jack Elphick - is modest and quiet and keeps to itself. It's an hypnotic, lingering study in Zombiance that shows though the body may be dead - the soul doesn't go so easily, making it almost more of a ghost story. Don't get me wrong, there is some pretty nasty gore and loud, shaky scenes of panicky chaos in this film - but while the rest of the world goes on shouting and struggling and fighting around him, Colin himself as a zombie is uninterested in the carnage and spectacle, feeding only out of a distracted necessity. He stumbles about lost, looking for pieces of himself to form a breadcrumb trail - more a victim of amnesia and long-term introspection than a shambling corpse. Along the way, we gradually learn what it is that drives him so - and in the end, something obvious and profound is revealed.

That humanity is always looking for the way home.

Wow, so many 5 star reviews! An example of a 5 star indie film in my opinion would be the EVIL DEAD, and not COLIN. At 5 stars you really have nowhere else to go as that is the summit. Do we really believe that these two films are on par with each other and that there is little room for improvement? I think not. Although they have a similar pedigree; indie/small budget/undead cinema fare, the EVIL DEAD is sooo much better despite its extreme vintage. Also, contrary to many opinions, COLIN is not the first Zombie film to portray events from the undead perspective. There are a number of films that portrayed that at least to some degree. One of them is I,ZOMBIE, (1999), though it spent more time detailing the physical and psychological changes that afflicted the hapless victim as he turned. The same Director was also responsible for DEAD CREATURES (2001), which told a similar tale of Zombie lifestyle, (see my review on Amazon). COLIN is an extremely tedious and ponderous film. I continually found myself watching the clock as it never seemed to "jump". Where COLIN could have redeemed itself (in the gore department), it also failed. The undead victim in COLIN eventually turned into a half decent stage 3 Zombie, though the pay off was too little and too late. Lots of flaws, like after feeding there was no blood on his face, weird sub plots that did not work well,...and the camera work stunk. For example, much of the film is under exposed and the action shots feature that irritating hand held filming technique which has been worked to death. All of this made the film fatiguing to watch, while it obscured the gore. Overall the acting was also spotty to say the least, and I did not care for the lead zombie either. On the plus side COLIN is a serious attempt at Horror that featured the classic Romero shambler type zombies. Also, thankfully this was not a "Zomedy", (which would have totally sunk it). There certainly was a stab at making this a decent entry into the Zombie film field, though it comes up short. Stick with the above noted Andrew PARKINSON films, especially I,ZOMBIE (though it also falls into my marginal category). Curiously, the keep case lists COLIN's run time at 165 minutes though my DVD clocked it at a still bloated 137 minutes. Much of COLIN should have been left on the cutting room floor. Nonetheless, I recognize the effort put into COLIN though there is no escaping the fact that it is a boring, poorly paced, marginal Zombie film. While many apparently disagree, I refuse to bow to the "Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome" and pay undue homage to a film just because of the circumstances that surround its production. As the film maker decided to take the plunge, then take the heat and get on with it. I absolutely agree to give the film maker kudos especially when one considers what he had to work with, but please do not insult the intelligence of the thoughtful film community with all of these maximum ratings. C'mon people, give your head a shake!

I bought this film due to the very good reviews many provided. It is an interesting idea - a zombie flick told from the point of view of the Zombie. Unfortunately that is a concept that, while interesting, is entertaining for a short period of time. There are scenes that move SOOOO slowly that my friends and I were shouting "come on already" and several friends took a break and came back, and said "what did I miss?" we replied - nothing, it is still the same scene. It's low budget but they did a decent job with effects. Seeing the world from a camera that is shaking frequently (to see things from the Zombie Colin's point of view) becomes an irritable headache in short order. The film dragged and the entire tale could have been told effectively in 40 minutes. It does have redeeming moments and I enjoyed watching the end of the film, a flashback to how he received his zombie-virus infection. That was lovely and gave the film and character more depth. The acting was quite good. The long sequences of shaking camera, extended zombie attack scene in a house with many people just doing zombie moaning and groaning and attacking uninfected humans for about 15 minutes was just silly. People all squashed into a room milling around, implausible how long it took to attack the uninfected - it was poorly done. However, if you have a good fast forward button, and can watch the key scenes and fast forward the ones that drag on interminable, it's an okay film. Not great, but okay (one of my friends walked out - not able to be patient with how slow the film was). Hope this helps some of you decide if the film is for you or not!