I decided to take a week off my blog last week, aside from one news post. I had a busy weekend, so didn't have the time or energy to work on it. This weekend however is the polar opposite, me on my own with all the time in the world to blog. I went into the Morley Nelson (writer of The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct video game) written and directed Uncontained completely blind, I had no idea what the film was going to be about, at first thinking it would be home invasion, then thinking it was post apocalyptic, before realising it was actually that most favourite of horror sub-genres; a zombie film. Would that subject matter make up for the bland protagonist character however?
Waking up buried in a snow drift, a wanderer (Nelson credited solely as 'The Man') heads through woodlands and stumbles across a remote house whose sole occupants appear to be two year old Brooke (Brooke Nelson), and her seven year old protector brother, Jack (Jack Nelson). Getting the upper hand on the man, Jack confiscates his weapons and informs him that he can only have them back if he can do some essential maintenance on the house. It is soon revealed that martial law has been declared in the area, and this appears to be due to a localised zombie outbreak. Some time later a woman appears (Nicole Nelson), a homeland operative who is the mother of the two children, and who tells the man of a deadly secret that he is all too familiar with. Meanwhile, local militia leader Brett (Peter O.Meara - Resident Evil: Extinction) is out roaming the area with his men, looking for his missing daughter, and the man becomes increasingly convinced that the remote family might have something to do with her disappearance.
In a way this had a good opening, a confusing emergence of the protagonist character, but with hindsight explained a lot. I have to say, it took me until nearly half an hour into this to realise that the apparent interpretive dance group who kept bizarrely appearing outside the house were not actually the personification of sorrow, but were actually this film's version of the undead! They were strange, often shown frozen in places in various poses, and in others doing the more traditional fast zombie type stuff. They never felt like much of a threat, but that may be due to the old zombie film adage of humans being a more deadly threat to the survivors than the dead. Brett was the standout character here, making for a captivating antagonist. Clothed in black, with a cowboy hat, and very reflective sunglasses, this man of few words had an unsettling presence, and more integral for a decent adversary, he actually had decent motivations. It is a shame the protagonists didn't fare as well. Chief of these was 'The Man', also a person of few words I can see how he was meant to be the different side of the same coin to Brett, but instead he came across as a personality vacuum. I felt nothing for this character, overly melodramatic and po-faced, matched in bland seriousness by 'The Woman', with the creepy children characters completing the set. To be fair, Brooke was fine, likely due to not even knowing she was in a film, the same couldn't be said for the character of Jack, with the young actor not able to speak his lines in a convincing manner.
I liked the remote setting, and also the approach of having a zombie outbreak film that took place in a location that seemed to be dealing with it quite well. The local police are still out doing their jobs, the local hospital isn't overrun, and people are able to be outside without much fear of zombie attacks. The story was perfectly fine, if a little over serious, it went in a predictable yet interesting enough direction, and the filmmaking style often saw little montages play out over soft playing music, even during the high action scenes. The snowy setting of course perfectly compliments the blood that is spilled at various moments, but with the lifeless characters there wasn't much for me to root for.
Uncontained was an acceptable zombie film, one that chooses to focus on the living rather than the dead. A big shout out to O'Meara in his role, but sadly his was the only interesting character to be found here, with the lifeless protagonists not doing anything to make me care about them. Uncontained came to SCREAMBOX exclusively on March 11th.
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