Colin (2008) [REVIEW]

I know that all my readers have this really cool perception of how awesome I am, and how I have a finger on the pulse of what’s new and hip. Of course, you are correct. However, I knew nothing about this film before seeing it, so I can’t take any credit at all in it’s discovery. My friend JD asked if I wanted to go, and I was all “Hmmmm”, and then he said it was free, and I was all “FUCK YES I’LL GO”. Supposedly it was filmed for around $80, according to America dollars. This film was shot in the UK, and I don’t feel like wasting my time converting that back to whatever currency was actually used, which was pounds or euros or crumpets or bangers and mash.

Poor Colin. You look like Eugene Tooms from The X-Files.

It only takes our hero, Colin, five minutes to get bit by a zombie. Nice work, Colin. You get the movie named after you and you can’t even last five minutes. We see Colin turn into a zombie, but rather than the typical mindless killing machine, he turns into a zombie more similar to Bub from Day of the Dead. He clearly retains some humanity, in the way he plays with kid’s blocks like he recognizes them, as well as grabbing the headphones from someone’s ear and carries it around with him as long as the music continues. Through Colin we get to see a few short zombie related incidents, the most important of which is his sister capturing him in hopes of sparking some sort of memory. Sadly, this fails, and he bites her, and they are now both zombies. He continues to shamble through the movie and gets involved in some sort of human/zombie showdown, until he eventually makes his way to his girlfriend’s apartment (or “flat”, for you Brits) to see his girlfriend’s body. We flash back to the beginning of the film and realize that before our character appeared onscreen, he had just left after killing his recently zombified girlfriend.

Maybe you guys could see better if you took the salisbury steaks off your damned eyeballs.

First of all, kudos to the filmmaker, Marc Price, for taking a creative idea and going for it. I’m not trying to say this film was groundbreaking or deserves a bunch of Grammy’s or whatever, but to accomplish as much as he did with as little resources as he had should be an inspiration to filmmakers everywhere. This film reminded me a little bit of Zombie Honeymoon (review here), in the sense that it told a non-traditional zombie story. The only problem with that, however, is that the reason those other types of stories become so commonplace is because of how effective they are. I left Colin thinking, “Yup, that certainly was a bunch of different zombie stories tied together through Colin”, but that’s really all you left feeling. I could have done with a little less handheld camera work, but what it comes down to is that Marc Price had the passion to make this film, and I didn’t. So I guess he wins. DAMMIT.

Wolfman Moon Scale