Send us Fan Mail A shorts day today, I am going to find and watch half a dozen zombie shorts and give you my thoughts. Did that rhyme? Woah, I'd better not break into song. FIRST WAVE 2014 6 mins 55 on Youtube The blurb - Following the outbreak of an aggressive virus, a young woman awakes in a hospital bed. As the horrifying events that led her there are revealed, it becomes clear that the cure is just the beginning. Night. A man and his daughter are running from zombies towards a school or hospital building. And then a woman wakes up in hospital, cuffed to the bed. She screams and has flashback to being one of the zombies chasing the man and girl through a building, I think. Getting a hammer to the head in the process. She has a semi circular blood patten on the white of her eye and I have seen that in a zombie movie before. And I have in the 2017 horror film The Cured. In the movie, characters who are infected with a zombie-like virus and successfully treated with a serum are left with a visible mark: a distinct, semi-circular crescent of blood in the white of their eyes. Was this the short that allowed the Elliot Page movie The Cured to be made? The doctor tells her she was the first, a great hope. More flashbacks. Her in a cell now. Good jump scare with a zombie outside and more flashbacks. The little girls dad is killed and she hides. And the doctor tells her they will all be released soon. He asks her what she remembers…. No in the movie they deny remembering anything from their time as zombies, but do. She just cries though. A she remembers being a zombie and then seeing the little girl and as a zombie getting more and more excited… end Very good, this was definitely the short that became The Cured. Excellent. Watching it on YouTube saw the comments from people saying this is what needs to be made rather than Hollywood nonsense. And indeed they did make it. Next SURVIVORS 2025 7 minutes When the unexpected side effect of a trial cancer treatment brings about the apocalypse, one man with his BMX and a Baseball bat, must use his martial arts skills to survive the infected hordes. A cyclist in armour cycles around a quiet city. Overturned buses. Quarantine zone. This is a proper action short. Excellent zombie effects, as he rides into one and hits it with a baseball bat before being chased by a running horde. It is proper BMX stunt riding to Are you gonna be my girl by Jet.=, jumping over barriers, riding up walls, clobbering the zombies. He gets knocked off his bike and his backpack comes off. He is then torn as zombies charge in, does he grab the backpack or get on his bike and leave? He goes for the pack and there is an awesome leg severing shot in slo mo. The violence is fun and OTT like the Bill Skarsgard Boy v World, but the blood and gore is all done in post that does let it down. I did laugh out loud when he hits the kid zombie. He rides out and across town, and there are high up shots with zombies running after him. Again, done really well. He is heading towards other survivors, but comes off his bike. Is he gonna be killed? No the other survivors are as badass as him. And after a cool drone short of their hide out… the biker opens the backpack and he has… a playstation… who wants a game fo FIFA? Who said the apocalypse couldn’t be fun? Well done the Kirby brothers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gQc06lHkC0 PASTIME 3 minutes by John Blankenship aka Matinee McCabre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy5Oq9OJz1c In 1968 the recently deceased mysteriously began to rise from the dead. There was no time for preparation, no time to draw battle lines. The plague ravaged our nation, our world. One by one our towns fell. No government could protect it's citizens from the virus. Until one of the only survivors was just nine years old. It is beautifully shot, as a young boy walks around a forest, collecting water in a jar, walking around a town in the 60s with old cars out and rusted. He goes into a house and finds baseball cards and comic books. Taking them, as well as baseball. He heads out into a field and hits the baseball out and away, the tink sound of the hit waking zombies in the field who move in on him as he raises his M16 machine gun. End. Wonderful and to the point. SEVERED 2025 9 minutes After a zombie bite, Hannah’s only chance for survival is a brutal amputation with James’s machete. But when he fails to return, her infected mind conjures a horrifying rescue—forcing her to question what is real, and what is a final, cruel hallucination. Very walking dead a couple of teens, a boy and a girl fight off a horde in the forest. The boy saves the girl, pushing her into a car, as he goes down under the horde. He then gets in but she has been bitten on the arm so they have to hurry. He then apologises and chops her arm off. The boy finds a gun in the glove compartment. She gives a heartfelt monologue about committing suicide and not being torn apart or being one of them. I had the end of The Mist vibes as he has the gun to her head but then the zombies move away. Or are killed and blood sprays up the car windows. Them being in the car is reminiscent of The Battery, if you have seen it, about the two baseball players surviving in the car. We then get very 28 Days later piano as the door opens and it is a ripoff Negan complete with Lucille, you kids want some help? She then wakes up in the car alone and still bitten. And her boy is a zombie. I did think he was under the horde. So she screams and blows her brains out. Well done, well filmed, great acting and special effects, just all done before somewhere. Moving onto Dead Line from 2022 20 minutes During a zombie outbreak, a recently bitten call-center employee working for a specialist 'Survivor Hotline' must help a young woman escape her infected mother and get to safety before he becomes one of the undead. A British comedy with too much music, as a guy on a support line takes calls from the public. He tries to sell decapitation kits etc, listening to people wanting to deal with the dead, or spreaders as they are know. After an off camera attack on the office, he is bitten and wounded. A woman then calls for help after her mother was bitten. He goes through his procedure booklet which has funny airline style diagrams. The whole thing is on him, at his desk, and was filmed during COVID, so it is just voices on the phone and him, as he starts to react to the bite on his hand. She hides in the bathroom from her zombie mother. And he says jump out the window, jump and roll. He is dying, and trying to help her get to safety. Again, it is all over the phone. He calls a military rescue centre who have orders to shoot to kill anyone out. And he gives them shit, saying in death he will find the officer and eat his heart. It is tense as lucy makes it to the military post, we hear shooting but she is ok, and the guy turns overnight but remains at his desk with the headset on even when a zombie, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jHA2i90Ndc All of these zombie shorts were thoroughly entertaining, some original, some less so, but all done well. There is a huge amount of zombie entertainment out there in the short movie space and we should, as a community, support them all. And finally, a special shout out to two zombie shorts I feel deserve some love, one of which is on the Disney channel no less, THE LAST MARRIAGE, and the very British STILL. Next up I am going watch the 30 zombie shorts on ALTER, a fantastic high end Youtube channel, if you haven’t heard of you must check it out. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtmNpo8LSL8ZUANvP8S54oAkURYsLFr9V
