Short zombie film Arise features perhaps one of the most early 2000s type protagonist imaginable, someone who really doesn't translate well into the modern world. Written and directed by Jay Reiter (as his thesis film while attending the Savannah College of Art and Design), this does little to stand out in a crowded genre, feeling more like a concept film for a larger picture than its own stand alone thing.
Thanatos (James Curran) is a factory worker with a bad attitude, acting like the world owes him a favour. One day, he returns from a food run for his colleagues to find the factory in shambles. A zombie outbreak has occurred, and many of his co-workers are either now the walking dead, or victims of the ghouls. With his girlfriend - Janet (Julie Collins) and her daughter likely somewhere trapped in the building, Thanatos sets out to kill all that stands between him and them.
From the name alone you can tell what sort of a douche the main character is. Mean, surly, dressed in black, and speaking in the most edge-lord way possible, he really is a product of his time. I seem to recall people of that type were often anti-hero protagonist characters during that time period. Even back then, I was never a fan of that type of person. His relationship with his boss, with his girlfriend, and with his girlfriend's child is all gruff and angry, making for a lead who it was very hard to like, or to care about their survival chances. To be fair, this is something that characters within the film world also think is a bit of a weirdo, especially with his apparent obsession with preparing for a Romero style zombie apocalypse.
Over the 18 minute runtime we get to see lovely Thanatos dispatch a bunch of zombies in a variety of ways. He seemed to be unable to stick to a weapon, picking a different type of factory tool for each of the ghouls he stumbles across, from a nail gun, to a drill, to his own throwing axe he was seen completing at film's start. That was the second half though, the first half was a little overlong, long dialogue heavy scenes that dragged a bit due to the sound quality making it a bit hard to make out what was being said. The second half was both blessed and cursed by poor lighting. Fight scenes were a little hard to make out, with the factory setting almost pitch black, but I admit sometimes the contrast between light and darkness was neat looking, such as a swinging light bulb in one scene. Zombie make-up was effective, and there was a decent amount of blood. The blood style was a bit random, sometimes dark red, sometimes watery, it looked fine on screen but was nothing special.
Arise was a functional low budget short zombie film. It at least works as feeling like a time capsule from that part of the century. It's lead character is such a try-hard that it was hard to care about him, and I did think that the action part of this could have done with some better lighting.
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