Thursday, February 25, 2010

Silent Night, Zombie Night and Blood Spray: A Movie Review

Director/writer: Sean Cain.

Sean Cain has been interviewed here regarding this project, and Silent Night, Zombie Night is heavy on the dramatic, light on the action and character driven (interview here). In other words, Sean Cain is so comfortable with this genre that he manages to add some soap opera elements to a post-apocalyptic world. How is that for confidence?

Silent Night, Zombie Night gets the ball rolling fairly quickly, with a random zombie attack in a quiet driveway. The blood flows, the baseball bats fly, toes get shot off and then the viewer is put right smack in the middle of a three way love story involving characters Frank (Jack Forcinito), Sarah (Nadine Stenovitch) and Nash (Andy Hooper). Silent Night, Zombie Night is only partially a horror film and mostly a drama.

This hat goes off to Jeff Leroy the special effects supervisor on this project, as the many gory scenes pop off with blood spraying reality. The attention to make-up and prosthetics is shown on the majority of characters, who linger in several of the wider shots. The virus, which is not fully explained, looks vicious and virulent, with the make-up department and writer creatively producing two separate types of zombies (Dominic Alfano, Tom Devlin and others). What of the writing, you say?

In order for this to be a critical review some attention needs to be applied to the faults of Silent Night, Zombie Night of which there are a few. Early in the film the character Nash is shot in the foot and instead of driving Nash to the hospital Frank takes him to an apartment complex. The reason for this is still being explained twenty minutes later. Also, from a limited first aid background, the likelihood of someone going into shock, or a coma from a bullet wound to the foot, or toe is very unlikely. Some unbelievability appears early in the film, but still Silent Night stays in tone, delivers action sequences, characters are fleshed out, and the love story is realistic.

Silent Night, Zombie Night just finished playing at the Nevermore Film Festival and this film will continue on the road for the next little while, with a DVD date unannounced. Check your local film festival for details on possible showings, or set one up and make director Sean Cain your new best friend for awhile! More details on the project below.

Acting/believability: 6.5 (Jack Forcinito stands head and shoulders above the rest).
Lighting/setting/realism: 7 (only some problems with night shots and darkness).
Writing/characters/plot: 7.5 (the story is interesting, with characters multi-dimensional).

Overall: 7 staggering zombies out of 10.

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1 comments:

Unknown said...

Great review. I didn't even think about the toe injury not being enough to cause shock...it was cool when Frank cauterized it, though! I completely agree that Forcinito outshined everyone - I loved his character.