The Joseph Avery (who also stars in this) and Matt Simpson (writer of this) co-directed Plague is an example of a low budget short zombie film done right. It tells a simple story, but manages to keep interest over its 17 minute runtime thanks to unique editing decisions, and plenty of classic slow walking undead.
Latvian refugee Vilhelm (Avery) has been smuggled into England where he hopes to begin a new life, free of all the burdens that he faced working for criminals. Upon arriving in London he gets to unfortunately witness first hand a zombie outbreak, but by hiding away in his apartment, he is able to weather the storm and survive the initial chaos. He heads out to the countryside where he hopes things will be easier than the ghoul infested city, but finds that the undead are everywhere in this bleak new world.
The short is narrated from the start by the protagonist, with the narration provided by Costa Ronin (Homeland TV show, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood). This created a cohesive feel, and I admit I am a fan of stories that begin later on, to then show the lead-up as the film's core. In this case, we have the thick accented Vilhelm giving his story of how he came to be in the U.K, and how he came to survive. With the character in present day with a bloody bandage wrapped around his hand, it seems that things might not end well for the character. From the initial prologue set in Latvia, this follows his journey in a scattershot approach, moving the character around in time to show his various battles. You get plenty of undead, with lovely scenes of him fighting and escaping from them. I particularly liked one scene in which he is cycling down a street as zombies try to grab at him from various sides.
Plague has an interesting editing technique, quick edits of various shots shot-gunned together with very slight occasional freeze-frames on key moments. It gave a chaotic feel to the battles the character gets in, as well as being a great way to show important information to the viewer. Avery was great in the lead role, the narration meaning the character on screen himself never speaks. The impression of a zombie infested world is displayed well, dilapidated buildings, corpses, and the undead themselves, resplendent in basic but lovely make-up and blood effects. From a vaguely slow start, this barrelled into things, taken on a variety of locations, and ending on a pretty cool open finish that could be interpreted in different ways.
Films such as Plague might not do much to innovate, but low budget indie films such as this are the comfort food of the zombie sub-genre of horror, bitesize and immersive, leaving me nostalgic for the time when films like this were commonplace.
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