It’s that time of year again! Time to celebrate the Resurrection with a weeklong plunge into all things zombie! Here’s the history: In 2008, Dr. Girlfriend and I decided to spend a week or so each year marathoning through zombie films that we’d never seen before and I would blog short reviews. And simple as that, the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon was born.
For the curious, here are links to 2008, 2009 (a bad year), 2010, 2011, 2012 (when we left the blog behind), 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.
Ten years ago, Dr. Girlfriend and I kicked off the Easter Zombie Movie Marathon (because, you know, the resurrection!) and for the tenth anniversary marathon, we’ve decided to go back and rewatch some of the best films from (nearly) every year. We had to make a few cuts here and there to have time to end the week with a tribute to the late, great George A. Romero on the 50th anniversary of the release of Night of the Living Dead.
One of the things I’m realizing looking back over ten years of Easter Zombie Movie Marathons is that the best films, the ones that have the most impact, are the low budget, indie films from around the world that know they need to do something special to stand out in the sea of zombie films that we’ve been flooded with over the past decade.
Over the past three days we’ve written about Pontypool, Dead Snow, and Wyrmwood; three of the most impressive low-budget entries into the genre in recent memory. Tonight’s entry maintains the same spirit of individuality and innovation while also going for something a little more aesthetically indie than what we’ve seen so far.
The Battery was filmed over 16 days for $6000 with a limited cast and crew. According to interviews with writer/director/lead Jeremy Gardner, the budget was established first and then the writing and filming was adjusted around it, so he chose to really focus on the intimate experience of two ex-baseball players on their own after the zombie apocalypse. This is a concept that isn’t entirely original in the low budget zombie movie landscape, but rarely has it been done with this well. A lot of that comes down to the personalities of the characters and the performances of Gardner as Ben and Adam Cronheim as Mickey.
If you’re looking for gory kills or complex action sequences, this is not the film for you. The entire approach to the story is diametrically opposed to most of the films in this genre, where usually the threat of zombies is intrinsic and the zombie effects take center stage (for better or worse). The main characters in nearly all of these films are people who either are heroes or are on the way to becoming heroes. That character arc is pretty universal in these films, with the zombie apocalypse being the crucible through which heroes are made, live, and die.
The Battery isn’t really interested in heroism. At least not in the way that other films tend to frame the concept. Usually heroism is developed and refined over the course of a quest of some sort. In The Battery, there is no end in sight. Ben and Mickey aren’t going anywhere in particular and their central conflict is the fact that Ben is okay with this, while Mickey is desperate for an endgame. I suppose this could be a barrier to entry for viewers, too, but I found it to be refreshing. Instead of characters who are defined by their escapist acts of bravery (or cowardice), or their overcoming of massive obstacles as if in a video game, Ben and Mickey seem like real people just trying to get by.
Sometimes they’re annoying. Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they’re heroic. Sometimes they’re cowardly. But they’re never defined by those moments. Those moments are just part of the overall character; you know, just like a real person. Both Gardner’s and Cronheim’s performances are naturalistic as hell. There’s never a sense that they’re performing; they’re fully inhabiting these roles and experiencing these situations.
Another element that made me love this film was the fact that they chose to avoid the traditional trapped in a house scenario that is the Platonic Ideal of zombie films — only referencing that they went through one and survived. The majority of The Battery is Ben and Mickey on the road, traveling around, scavenging for food, and bickering. Ben is made for this world, but Mickey is not. He wants at least some comforts; a bed, a roof, a girlfriend. The film uses its soundtrack to really establish the barrier that Mickey puts up between himself and the world around him.
The music, indie rock from across the internet, blasts loudly, shutting out the sounds of nature, approaching zombies, and Ben. It’s a creative way of using music to both establish character and shape the narrative approach.
The openness of the first two thirds of the film is then countered with a risky final act. When Ben and Mickey find themselves trapped in their car surrounded by zombies, we are treated to an extended sequence of them simply hanging out in the car. This is going to drive some viewers crazy, but again, because we’ve become invested in the lives of these two and know that they’re not superheroes, but ordinary people, there’s a lot more tension because we know there’s not a big heroic action sequence on the way. And when action is finally taken, it ends poorly.
Despite this, the end of the film does a fantastic job in making the car sequence resonate and establishes the potential for a sequel somewhere down the line. According to interviews (and the r/zombies subreddit) the only real barrier to this happening someday is time and, to an extent, money.