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I just watched this one the other day and.. .... ... ..... .....
I seem to remember SK's movies being very atmospheric and good. I absolutely LOVE John Cusack, and Samuel L. Jackson - their work is impeccable, and JC even had me tearing up at one point. But with this movie I was seriously underwhelmed with what could have been a great story. I kept thinking "maybe if I read the book?" the entire movie.
Literally, the only thing that kept me interested in this film was the survival element - but I could get that out any zombie film right?
However: this could just be a censure of SK himself.
Why?
1. This was basically a zombie apocalypse film - without the zombies. It felt like SK saw the zombie fever take over hollywood and the small screen and wanted in on some of that action, but thought to himself: "Eureka! I'll do it with a more cerebral story! I'll tell the "thinking man's" zombie thriller." So basically you have mindless crazed people who chase after and kill anyone who is not like them. Later, they convert people into their drone ranks instead of killing them. Why? We'll never know, and it doesnt appear that our protagonists care to know either.
2. There is NO REAL PLOT other than to have zombie-like people. Literally - there is no plot. No explanation for anything, except "Oh! Look! Zombie-like people! Lets save my son even though we know itll result in death!" This movie literally jumps the shark and we are supposed to accept it because SLJ spouts some scripture (which passage I know well). Ohhhh! Biblical! Not. This isnt the 80s. You cant just make stuff up and slap a scripture reference on it and expect it to be believable, or for us to make the leap because it sounds mystical. Ohh! Mystical! Not.
3. Questions left unanswered? You bet! I never thought I'd call SK a hack, but this is that day. I like to hope we live in a society where the real and deep questions we spend time pondering arent the kind that came out of a 12-year-olds imagination. I get that any mystery/thriller/horror author is going to leave you with lots of unanswered questions, but I seriously hope those questions are more thoughtful than this film. The only questions I was left with were: why did they make this film? was this SK's fault or the directors/producers fault? was the failure in the book or the movie?
The long and short of it is this: it felt like an unfinished story. This movie would be good if it made up the first episode in a 3-episode mini-series, and the other episodes would reveal more of the how this happened; why this happened; and who is doing this.
Or I guess we could just chalk it up to SK's version of a nightmare: long on fear, short on concrete fact.
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