Autumn (2009)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

We watched Autumn years ago and still use it as the yardstick by which we measure other bad movies. For us, "Autumn" has basically become shorthand for"a very, very bad film". I can't muster the psychic energy to care enough to review this stinker, but I'll give one quick example of the bad writing and low budget that plague the movie. At one point the characters build a fence to keep out the zombies. The characters even say any fence built for that purpose would have to be really strong. When we then see the fence with hordes of zombies pushing against it, the fence is just a cheap, waist-high thing, what appears to be a sand fence, those little fences used to keep sand on beaches in place, and definitely not strong enough to stop a single person, much less a horde of shambling zombies.

When I read the summary to this movie I thought that it would be a descent SciFy, but after watching it, I don't think a 1 is a low enough rating for it. They didn't explain anything, and it was just everywhere.Only watch this movie if it is to torture someone, because honestly, it is worse than the Chinese dripping torture. I don't think I can write ten lines about this movie so here I go on talking about absolutely nothing that has to do with anything. Maybe if you stare hard enough at the screen, it will distract you from the fact that I am blabbing on about nothing.

This movie isn't terrible, but it definitely has "student project" written all over it. The director tries to be artsy at times, but it mostly just comes off as cheap and transparent. The plot line is a bit dull, and it seems the film is trying to convey the inner struggles of the survivors through telepathy and body language - which turns out not to be a great screen concept. In the end, this movie could have been made a silent film.The movie follows the classic "everyone dies what do we do now?" concept, but the only characters that are even vaguely likable and interesting are drowned in a sea of mediocre acting by their co actors. I'm referring to Carradine and Fletcher, who are trying to save their colleagues from a fate worse than being eaten alive by the living dead - being eaten alive by armchair movie critics.The character Emma, played by Lana Kamenov, is absolutely mind numbingly annoying. I blame part of it on the script, but everything from the delivery of the lines to how she moves on camera is unimpressive. Watching Kamenov and Fletcher together is actually funny at times; she makes Fletcher seems like one of the best actors of our era in their dialogues.Tolson does a fairly decent job but his overly stoic character adds nothing much of interest to the plot line - also here most of his character development comes by telepathy and grim facial expressions. When his character finally has a burst of chattering he is paired with Carradine, and shadows do seem darker when the sun is bright - that's all I can say about that.In terms of following the "Survival Horror" genre, the movie isn't very interesting. We are thankfully free from most Shock-and-Awe type of horror, instead it is a more seat-twisting type of building suspense that never really quite climaxes. The zombie make-up is quite decent, and the zombie breed, albeit not fueling may particularly action-filled sequences, is somewhat interesting. The post-apo details are not very well fleshed out, and we don't learn much about the world as a whole. The movie felt like a really long pilot episode for a TV series.The sound track and mixing is very bizarre, carrying long horror music loops running even though the characters are clearly in no danger, viewers expect something to happen, but we are abruptly cut to a new scene.Footage is obnoxious at times. Autumn... leaves falling... people dying.. OK, we get it, the leaves represent people. It seemed the director loves shooting in the dark, but it doesn't make the movie any more suspenseful.In the end, it felt like the movie lacked a direction. Once you think the film is going to pick up, it lets you down, and suddenly ends. I did like Fletcher's and Carradine's performances though.

I was just looking around on Netflix for something to watch and the description seemed interesting. I usually love low budget zombie flicks. I mean, Night of the Living Dead was low budget and turned out to be a classic.What was I getting myself into? I yawned so many times through this film, it just wasn't interesting at all. I thought it might have a great storyline, but that didn't happen either. The acting was what I expected though, so no big deal there. Not much action at all, which usually isn't that important if there's a storyline.This film had nothing to keep me interested and I wouldn't recommend anyone actually paying money to buy this. But, if you want to watch a horrible low budget film, this is the one for you.