Customer Reviews

The Zombie Apocalypse Collection: Featuring SCREAM FARM

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INDIETALK REVIEW:
Veteran indie horror auteur Jim O'Rear's latest, "Scream Farm" (the largest part of the Zombie Apocalypse Collection) has something for everyone. What O'Rear has going for him is a thorough understanding of the genre and enough overall film sense to pull off a really cool hybrid of several genres that skillfully employs conventions from all of them.

With zombie films being a staple of the low-budget indie horror scene, the challenge to filmmakers working within the genre -should they even consider accepting the challenge - is to try something new, approach the familiar elements from a fresh perspective. So, O'Rear gets high marks here: any zombie film that begins with a drug deal gone bad and martial arts battle between mobsters has something going for it. This inciting incident involving a mutant batch of genetically engineered weed that goes missing sets in motion a fast placed plot that focuses on the gang of mobsters (led by O'Rear, in a very convincing performance) searching for the lost stash and winding up in the haunted house set up by a group of students as a fundraiser.

In different hands the film could have easily turned into a preachy "just say no" cautionary tale, but O'Rear balances the mood nicely, shifting between moments of stoner humor, mobster mayhem (a really well done bullet to the head shot), and slasher horror. While production values are generally decent, cinematography is a bit dodgy.

Nobody is going to confuse "Scream Farm" with high art --- but anyone who puts on a zombie film with the slightest notion that there might be some sophisticated sense of aesthetics or a rich narrative teeming over with subtext is probably pretty confused to begin with. No, "Scream Farm" (the largest part of the Zombie Apocalypse Collection) is what it is, good, goofy, gory fun.