Colin (2008)

• Written, produced and directed by Marc Price
• Starring
  • Alastair Kirton
  • Daisy Aitkens
  • Kate Alderman
  • Leanne Pammen
  • Tat Whalley
• Executive produced by Justin Hayles

Below a certain level, it becomes meaningless to speak about a film’s budget. Colin has gotten wide press as “the $75 zombie movie,” which would raise more questions than answers even if it wasn’t made in Britain (hint: they don’t use dollars there). Do they really mean that only $75 worth of resources were expended to make Colin? Hardly; even a guerrilla-shot “no-budget” production takes up space and energy. If writer/producer/director Marc Price (also DP, editor and sound designer) only spent the equivalent in pounds of $75 making this movie, it’s only because everyone else – actors, crew, makeup artists, composers, etc. — donated their time and talents, and quite probably their physical resources. (I mean, there’s even a credit for “catering” in the closing crawl. Even cheap pizza for the crew would have run more than $75.)

“The true danger of home repair projects — tonight on Eyewitness News!”

But just like Robert Rodriguez gained notoriety for El Mariachi (1992) by touting its $10,000 budget (never mind that over $100,000 was pumped into it by Columbia to clean it up before they released it), that kind of concrete minimalist figure helps win street cred among do-it-yourself cinema aficionados. It sounds better in ad copy than “made for as little as possible by volunteers.”

(Psst – Nathan. You’re supposed to talk about the movie itself sometime, not just the budget.)

Right. I was getting there. I know what I’m doing.

(Okay then.)

All right.

Jazz hands!!!

Despite all the ad copy and pullquotes that laud Colin for its originality in focusing on a single person in the process of becoming a zombie, that kind of plot has been used before (I can think of the Fangoria-produced I, Zombie: A Chronicle of Pain (1998), and I know I thought of another in the shower this morning, but I don’t keep a notepad with my in the shower). Nor are the circumstances of the zombie apocalypse which background it out of the ordinary; it’s a standard Romero-style zombie infection – contagious bites, brainless lust for human flesh, headshots, etc.

All that aside, it’s an intriguing little drama with seriocomic touches (the DVD commentary with the director, star, and two helping hands put a little more emphasis on the comic than I could see by myself in the movie), and the production puts its minuscule resources to appropriate use by telling a personal, almost intimate story, instead of the too-common impulse of microbudgeters to shoot a global catastrophe on paper-route money.

Jeez! Enough with the pouty zombies who can’t even break a window!

So what’s the movie about? It’s about a regular joe named Colin (Alastair Kirton) who, at the start of the movie, has just received a zombie bite. He wards off his already-zombified roommate (Leigh Crocombe) and descends into zombiehood overnight. By morning, he’s a stiff and shuffling corpse, emptied of all but the most rudimentary intelligence, and he goes out wandering aimlessly.

Along the way, he intersects with several other people: a group of survivors who’re fending off an undead throng with frying pans and electric drills (Britain, you recall, has no Second Amendment, which is the best defense against a zombie apocalypse), a kindly older gentleman who secretly has the hobby of torturing young ladies to death in his basement, and Colin’s own sister Linda (Daisy Aitkens), who is convinced that Colin will snap out of it and remember who he is if only he can see their mother. I suppose it would be fair to say that the story is as much what happens around Colin as to him, but even in his more uninvolved scenes, his presence is usually a catalyst for what happens around him.

The pallor? Well, he never got around to his holiday on the Continent this year…

While there are scenes of quiet tragedy that surround this man who is no longer a man, the one scene which has the most impact is anything but quiet. As Colin and a group of other zombies randomly congregate, they are set upon by a semi-organized band of local zombie hunters, who use everything from random blunt objects to a razor-blade slingshot to bring down their numbers. (This scene, and all of the action scenes in the movie, are shot with a handheld camera, and the visuals sometimes end up looking like they were shot by an epileptic espresso addict; it’s effective, but anyone who was afflicted with vertigo duting The Blair Witch Project’s theatrical run is advised to avoid Colin in any format.) After the assault, three of the attackers are found to have been bitten, and over their screams, their teammates have to steel their stomachs, draw straws, and bludgeon them to death, without the distancing effect of a firearm.

Kudos to Alastair Kirton as Colin for tying it all together. He’s got barely any dialogue except for the very beginning and a flashback at the end (in fact, there’s not much dialogue anywhere in the movie, and when there is, it seems more important that characters are talking than what they actually say), and he’s a brainless creature driven by instinct, but he still infuses his performance with an oblivious pathos, with zombie Colin unaware of how pitiful a figure he is.

This is how you have to fight the zombie apocalypse without firearms, folks.

The pullquote on the front of the DVD box declaring Colin to be “original, compelling and as thought provoking as Night of the Living Dead” is, in my opinion, humbug – especially if one infers that Colin is also supposed to be as “original… as NOTLD.” This is, after all, a movie which relies entirely on both the zombie mythos that grew out of Romero’s work and the audience’s familiarity with such. But it is an intriguing, quirky, and worthwhile little indie gem, and even without the “$75 zombie movie” hype, it’s got the legs to become a cult sleeper favorite. However you calculate the budget, Colin returns a lot of bang for the buck.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 21
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0