Severed: Forest of the Dead

 

 

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"Severed" has all of the ingredients required for a zombie movie. Something turns one person into zombie, at which point biting another person turns them into a zombie, and the next thing you know there are a whole bunch of zombies. You have people thrown together by circumstances who have to get out of there, but some of them are going to get bit (see previous point), and not all of them are going to get out of there alive. This has been true of what we would not have to qualify as the modern zombie film, which dates back to George A. Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead," which changed everything from the old fashioned voodoo inspired zombies of "White Zombie" with Bela Lugosi. "Severed" fits the pattern just like "28 Days Later," "Dawn of the Dead," "Shaun of the Dead," "Dead and Breakfast," and whatever other zombie movies you have seen recently.

What is different about this one is primarily that it takes place in a forest instead of a city, so instead of around the corner or behind the window, this time there could be a zombie around the next tree. There is a point early on when the uninfected humans are gathered in a rickety old shack in the middle of the woods, but that does not last long and we are back to running through the woods. You might ask how come there are so many people running around in the forest to be turned into zombies, and that is because there are not only all these loggers cutting down trees, there are environmental protesters running around as well. So not only do you have two groups that are not disposed to like each other, the ante is up because the tree huggers have been spiking trees (which ironically ends up being the precipitous event), and it turns out the forestry company has been messing around with a secret formula, GX1134, which makes old growth forests grow three times faster. However, since the music takes an ominous turn when one of the company's scientists notes he has never seen sap like this before, it turns out that this was not such a good idea. Besides, since this is a zombie movie set in a forest that means (wait for it) chainsaws!

Director Carl Bessai provide plenty of gore, but actually shows some sensitivity in that when the zombies get one of our little band of potential survivors, who then has to be put out of their misery, we might see the jets of blood spraying people, but not what the axe (or chainsaw) is doing to the zombie. The problems, as always, come more from the story line, because even though the CEO of the company has sent his son into the forest to find out why the logging operation has stopped, the greedy corporation decides to close off the entire forest once they find out zombies are running through the woods (it is not clear if they think one day the zombies will be dead or whether they really are writing off this forest for the rest of eternity). So these people are trapped, trapped do you hear me, with (for the sake of the film's logic), no way of getting out. The whole idea of doing "Deliverance" only with zombies instead of red necks was good enough, but they decided this film needed an evil corporate entity.

The part where this film started to really lose me is our dwindling group of survivors finds some other survivors taking a different approach to the situation. It was sort of like jumping from "Night of the Living Dead" to "Day of the Dead" all of the sudden. It is a bit too jarring, as is the idea that a woman can go from being worried about being raped (not to mention being turned into a zombie) to deciding to have sex (I know it is supposed to symbolize the resilience of the human spirit and such, but it always strikes me as being somewhere between gratuitous and ludicrous). But I am still inclined to round up on this movie because some of the scenes in the woods look pretty good, especially at the end when it starts raining. Yes, the names of most of the characters have already escaped me, but they were all playing standard roles so names hardly matter. Besides, you know somebody has to do something stupid so you can hardly fault somebody for doing something so monumentally stupid at the climax of this 2005 film. At least they deserved their fate, which you cannot really say for most of these walking unhappy meals.

For the most part the zombies move slow, but they do get into feeding frenzy moods once they have somebody to sink their teeth into, which happens early and often. Yes, I know that they still should not be able to surprise people over and over again any more than everybody should suddenly have an inability to take two steps without falling down, but it is not like you are supposed to take this sort of thrill ride all that seriously in the first place. Only "Severed" comes up for the title on this film, but the "Forest of the Dead" part could help people who are trying to find the zombie movie set in a forest. I just watched "Dog Soldiers" last month, which was a werewolf movie set in a forest, so clearly horror movies set in forests can work. Of course, in the beginning that was where horror stories took place as Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and all those other fairy tale surrogates went off into the woods and encountered all sort of dangers, with their attendant Freudian implications.

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