“Opstandelsen brings the zombie apocalypse into the house of God.” reads the
tagline from IMDB.
And it does. Kind of.
The film seems to want to be Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985), but in Denmark, in a church.
What it actually is, is a brief introductory scene in a church to establish that the film takes place in a church, during a funeral. At least they picked or found or had available to them a decent location to shoot in. Then four, wait, make that three, youngish characters, two men and a woman, stagger around in the storage areas, basement and underworks of the church, eventually making their way back to the church proper, getting picked off one by one by a relatively sparse but nonetheless persistent zombie horde.
The zombie monster design seems to kind of split the difference between the “grime on their face” approach of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and the “torn formal clothes” of Night of the Living Dead (1968) with a liberal application of karo syrup blood. A lot of karo syrup blood. The actors must have really hated trying to wash that stuff out of their hair and clothes between shoots. Oh, wait, those clothes are all fucking ruined. At least they got the mix right on the blood so it doesn’t look to unrealistic. But they’re really doing nothing new with the zombie as a monster. Have your friends dress in thrift-shop nice clothes. Dirty them up a bit, tear the clothes up a bit, and pour some karo syrup blood on them. You want zombies? Here’s your fucking zombies. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.
As for the special effects, they’re also not breaking any new ground. There’s a couple decent but unexceptional kills. At least they bothered to plan out a few key effects scenes. But the effects scenes are, as I said, unexceptional. A gory bite wound on a calf. A hatchet to a head. Some zombie arms burst through a door and scratch a character up before breaking through and a key zombie tears the top off of his head and buries its face in the character’s brains. The female lead gets her head torn clean off after a group of zombies gnaw at her neck. But the use of cuts is key to pulling off an effect where a cut is planned to pull off the illusion and the makers of this film are inexpert at planning and executing and later editing their cuts at best, so the effects all seem staged and fake, which, of course, they are, but it shouldn’t be your goal to make them look staged and fake unless you’re doing a parody, in which case I could totally understand going that way, but I don’t think that they were trying to make a parody. More’s the shame.
All of the shots feel either overly planned or completely improvised and seem by turns either staged or jarring. There’s an inorganic feel overall. There’s also a heavy use of handheld camera which, as I have often said, if done correctly can do much to immerse an audience in a film, but when done incorrectly, as in this film, it puts a wall up between the audience and the film and makes it impossible for the audience to immerse themselves in the film. The cameraman becomes a character and an unwanted one. If there was some consistency to the camera style, perhaps alternating scenes composed from set shots with scenes composed from hand-held shots to express different feels it might have worked but there wasn’t and it doesn’t. Also the color temperature varies wildly from shot to shot. Either the cameras weren’t color balanced or they didn’t know well enough to or never bothered to address this in post-production. And in some shots, there is digital artifacture that could not have possibly been overlooked, but it seems the creators either never “checked the gate” or shrugged and said, “Fuck it. It’s good enough” . The scenes alternate between being underlit and overlit, and in some scenes the light source is reflected in the eyes of the characters and in other shots the light source was obviously either poorly planned or improvised. There are some decent shots in the film, but they’re sparse like chocolate chips in a cookie. You get a couple decent shots in each scene, but most of the shots are dross.
The music is awful. The overall tone is right. It’s horror movie music. But the samples used are just off. If you’re going to bother to compose music for a film, why not take a few extra minutes to find other samples or alter the samples you’re going to use so that their tone is more reflective of the tone you’re trying to accomplish. All it takes is a synth sound that sounds too artificial to turn your music from haunting to hilarious. At times the music is serviceable. Certain hits, stabs, and melodies work, but overall the music sounds like Midnight Syndicate. Horror movie music trying too damn hard to be horror movie music and over-shooting their target, landing in parody.
It’s 50 minutes long but it feels both shorter and longer. Shorter because there’s nothing really happening. There’s the opening scene. Then chasing. Then a pause for a bit of dialogue and a key practical special effect. Then more chasing. Then another pause for a bit of dialogue and another key practical special effect. Cut. Paste. Repeat. Longer because even though there’s action going on, it’s boring. The characters are only different in that they are of different genders and look different but aside from that they may as well be mannequins. One thing I will say about the acting is that at least the main character actors seem like they’re trying to do a convincing job. They don’t. But at least they’re trying and that’s what really counts. Isn’t it?
Overall? This is definitely a “B” movie. Supposedly this film cost 50,000 DKK, whatever a DKK is. But I think they fluffed the reported budget in the hopes of increasing the payoff if and when it got picked up for distribution which it hopefully didn’t. Don’t bother with this unless you’re a zombie movie completist. And even then leave this one for the tail end of your list. There’s so many better good and so bad they’re good zombie movies out there that it would be a waste of time to watch this one unless you want to be a zombie movie know-it-all jerk like me and no one should really want that because everyone hates a know-it-all.
And it does. Kind of.
The film seems to want to be Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985), but in Denmark, in a church.
What it actually is, is a brief introductory scene in a church to establish that the film takes place in a church, during a funeral. At least they picked or found or had available to them a decent location to shoot in. Then four, wait, make that three, youngish characters, two men and a woman, stagger around in the storage areas, basement and underworks of the church, eventually making their way back to the church proper, getting picked off one by one by a relatively sparse but nonetheless persistent zombie horde.
The zombie monster design seems to kind of split the difference between the “grime on their face” approach of Cannibal Holocaust (1980) and the “torn formal clothes” of Night of the Living Dead (1968) with a liberal application of karo syrup blood. A lot of karo syrup blood. The actors must have really hated trying to wash that stuff out of their hair and clothes between shoots. Oh, wait, those clothes are all fucking ruined. At least they got the mix right on the blood so it doesn’t look to unrealistic. But they’re really doing nothing new with the zombie as a monster. Have your friends dress in thrift-shop nice clothes. Dirty them up a bit, tear the clothes up a bit, and pour some karo syrup blood on them. You want zombies? Here’s your fucking zombies. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.
As for the special effects, they’re also not breaking any new ground. There’s a couple decent but unexceptional kills. At least they bothered to plan out a few key effects scenes. But the effects scenes are, as I said, unexceptional. A gory bite wound on a calf. A hatchet to a head. Some zombie arms burst through a door and scratch a character up before breaking through and a key zombie tears the top off of his head and buries its face in the character’s brains. The female lead gets her head torn clean off after a group of zombies gnaw at her neck. But the use of cuts is key to pulling off an effect where a cut is planned to pull off the illusion and the makers of this film are inexpert at planning and executing and later editing their cuts at best, so the effects all seem staged and fake, which, of course, they are, but it shouldn’t be your goal to make them look staged and fake unless you’re doing a parody, in which case I could totally understand going that way, but I don’t think that they were trying to make a parody. More’s the shame.
All of the shots feel either overly planned or completely improvised and seem by turns either staged or jarring. There’s an inorganic feel overall. There’s also a heavy use of handheld camera which, as I have often said, if done correctly can do much to immerse an audience in a film, but when done incorrectly, as in this film, it puts a wall up between the audience and the film and makes it impossible for the audience to immerse themselves in the film. The cameraman becomes a character and an unwanted one. If there was some consistency to the camera style, perhaps alternating scenes composed from set shots with scenes composed from hand-held shots to express different feels it might have worked but there wasn’t and it doesn’t. Also the color temperature varies wildly from shot to shot. Either the cameras weren’t color balanced or they didn’t know well enough to or never bothered to address this in post-production. And in some shots, there is digital artifacture that could not have possibly been overlooked, but it seems the creators either never “checked the gate” or shrugged and said, “Fuck it. It’s good enough” . The scenes alternate between being underlit and overlit, and in some scenes the light source is reflected in the eyes of the characters and in other shots the light source was obviously either poorly planned or improvised. There are some decent shots in the film, but they’re sparse like chocolate chips in a cookie. You get a couple decent shots in each scene, but most of the shots are dross.
The music is awful. The overall tone is right. It’s horror movie music. But the samples used are just off. If you’re going to bother to compose music for a film, why not take a few extra minutes to find other samples or alter the samples you’re going to use so that their tone is more reflective of the tone you’re trying to accomplish. All it takes is a synth sound that sounds too artificial to turn your music from haunting to hilarious. At times the music is serviceable. Certain hits, stabs, and melodies work, but overall the music sounds like Midnight Syndicate. Horror movie music trying too damn hard to be horror movie music and over-shooting their target, landing in parody.
It’s 50 minutes long but it feels both shorter and longer. Shorter because there’s nothing really happening. There’s the opening scene. Then chasing. Then a pause for a bit of dialogue and a key practical special effect. Then more chasing. Then another pause for a bit of dialogue and another key practical special effect. Cut. Paste. Repeat. Longer because even though there’s action going on, it’s boring. The characters are only different in that they are of different genders and look different but aside from that they may as well be mannequins. One thing I will say about the acting is that at least the main character actors seem like they’re trying to do a convincing job. They don’t. But at least they’re trying and that’s what really counts. Isn’t it?
Overall? This is definitely a “B” movie. Supposedly this film cost 50,000 DKK, whatever a DKK is. But I think they fluffed the reported budget in the hopes of increasing the payoff if and when it got picked up for distribution which it hopefully didn’t. Don’t bother with this unless you’re a zombie movie completist. And even then leave this one for the tail end of your list. There’s so many better good and so bad they’re good zombie movies out there that it would be a waste of time to watch this one unless you want to be a zombie movie know-it-all jerk like me and no one should really want that because everyone hates a know-it-all.
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