Sick: Survive The Night (2012)

Sick: Survive The Night (2012)
Director: Ryan M. Andrews
Writers: Ryan M. Andrews, Chris Cull

Yawn. Yet another low budget zombie film. This one had so little money it explains what happened to the world by showing the reaction of a character as she listens to multiple newscasts via a radio. No stock footage of riots. No archival video of cities collapsing. Just a medium shot of a face as we hear the tale of a virus infecting humanity and turning people into mindless flesh eating creatures.

Two years after civilization collapsed four groups remain. There's the research lab protected by military who are looking for a cure. The pointdexters are led by Dr Rozetta who frequently verbally clashes with the soldiers in what looks like a school. The second group are those humans that have banded together to build a settlement for protection. The third group are the vultures who swoop down on weaker parties to steal and scavenge from them. The last group are the brain chomping, once human, monsters. At least the last group I understood what they were doing in the film. Their motivation was to eat humans. Not sure what everyone else was up to. Anyway, representatives from all four groups converge on a single family dwelling to battle it out.

Curiously, the script isn't packed with wall to wall zombie (mutant?) action. Instead we are regaled by the inexperienced thespians as they chew through page after page of talking without saying anything, yelling and crying. I can't recall another zombie film with this much crying.

Romero's DAY OF THE DEAD (an obvious inspiration) highlighted the bickering that stems from being confined with people you don't see eye to eye with but that film had a smart script and actors who brought the characters to life. Here we have characters sitting at school desks, or on a sofa, bitchin' and moaning about idiotic things. There's a character who is supposed to be a bad ass bitch but she is gut shot and out of the film before we see her doing anything other than posturing. Another character ties up his teammate threatening to kill him for reasons that I couldn't fathom. And I suspect the writers couldn't convince anyone of their explanation either.

SICK is one tedious scene after another. The Canadian film offers nothing new, and can't rise to being an entertaining zombie film. It doesn't have to be good, it only has to keep my interest.

Genre darling Debbie Rochon plays a scientist at a remote location who sends video reports to the protagonists' lab.

* out of ****