Colin

The funny thing about this movie is that a few months ago, I hadn't even heard of it. Around the time the October horror movie challenge was going on, I heard a few people mention that they'd seen it and that it was a decent independent horror flick, and so I added it to my blockbuster queue based solely upon that recommendation. I knew nothing about this movie, didn't even know what it was about, and I couldn't really tell from the cover picture (is that kid a vampire or a zombie?) So I got this movie in the mail and I let it sit around my house for about a week, and then one day I'm tired and bored so I decide to watch the movies I got from Blockbuster, but I don't know if I'm in the mood to watch "Colin," so I decide that if I'm too tired after watching the first two movies, I'll just return it without watching it. I watch the other two movies and I figure I'll give "Colin" a shot, too, so I put it in, and then proceed to spend the next two hours glued to the screen, transfixed. I LOVED this movie, and it cracks me up not how a movie went from being one I wasn't even interested in watching to being one of the best horror movies I've seen this year.

"Colin" is a zombie movie (not a vampire movie, just to clear that up) and it's unlike any other zombie movie I've ever seen. Most of those movies feature people running from the zombies and the suspense comes from wondering if they will escape the zombies or not. In this movie, the main character, Colin, becomes a zombie in the first few minutes of the movie, and the rest of the movie is spent watching life from his perspective. that might sound boring (I know I sure as hell wouldn't have given the movie a chance if I'd known that this was the premise, because who wants to see a zombie lurch around for two hours?) but somehow, it works. Colin isn't a typical brain-dead member of some flesh eating horde. He clearly has some consciousness left, and it's sad to watch him stagger around, not really fitting into the zombie world any better than he fit into the human world. It's sad to see Colin's family react to him as well, since they obviously want to find some way to cure him but it doesn't seem to be possible, though this doesn't stop them from loving him and being sad that he's gone (even while he's technically still alive). That drama is handled well and adds to the overall sad feeling of the movie.

The special effects aren't anything spectacular, but I was impressed as hell with how real they looked (especially considering that this movie was supposedly made for about 70 US dollars...this makes me want to go out and make my own movie, if a movie this good can be made that cheaply). I was seriously blown away by this movie. every time I started to think "Ok, this is getting kind of long, it can end now" the movie would toss some other plot twist at me and get me hooked all over again. It's such an impressive movie that I want to run out and buy a copy (and buy copies for all my friends). Well worth checking out. Tell all your friends.