• Written and directed by Eric Ray
• Starring
  • Kristan Jakubczyk
  • Jimmy Flowers
  • Adam Roa
  • Jaime Howe
  • Rufino Ocamica

I want to remind everyone that I, a seasoned and mature critic, do not conflate the movie and its makers. Aside from those rare occasions where a movie is so wantonly and determinedly foul that I have to call into question its director’s sanity or fitness to move freely in society, I am certainly willing to admit that a good person can make a bad movie. In this particular case, I would gladly spend an evening with Eric Ray, writer/director of Life Room, discussing movies and life in general over pizza and root beer, and suspect we’d have a grand ol’ time. My opinion of him is in no way colored by the fact that Life Room is a very poor movie.

As our story opens, the zombie outbreak has already begun, with newscasters calmly informing that a bacterial contagion has begun in Miami and quickly traveled across the country and the globe, reanimating the dead. We then move from the macrocosm to the microcosm, as three people run down a dark alley to stay away from the living dead: Marcus (Rufino Ocamica), Paul (Ryan Howe), and Alex (Angela Calabrasi). Their only idea of safety is to get to “Saint T’s,” a church where Marcus works and to which he has keys. They pick up another person in the form of Christine (Kristan Jakucczyk), frantically trying to get to sanctuary, then have their numbers cut down by a very quick zombie attack (fast editing and night shooting can be a boon when you can’t afford any real violence or gore), then are rescued by a further three people: Brad (Adam Roa), Jeffrey (Jimmy Flowers), and Lily (Jaime Howe). And yes, you’re allowed to remember their names, as this is going to be our fairly stable cast for most of the movie.

The living dead, or the clientele at your neighborhood Chinese buffet?

Following Marcus’ original plan, they make it through the electric gates outside the church and into the “life room,” where the youth group meets; the doors to the outside are reinforced, it can be secured from the rest of the building, and the windows are supposedly too narrow for anyone from outside to get through (they don’t look that narrow, but sure, I’ll go with it). The only problem is that, although there are normally snacks in the life room, there’s currently zero food in there. Let the bickering commence!

Certainly you know that one of the classic patterns for zombie movies, modeled after the venerable example of the original Night of the Living Dead, is to trap a disparate group of survivors together and then let them clash with each other. You probably also know that, as many times as it’s been tried in zombie movies since, no one has been able to make a good zombie movie following that pattern. NotLD had two things going for it: clear motivations and roles among the characters, and good acting. Later movies usually have neither of these in measurable quantities, and such instead treat us to a tedious bitchfest for most of the running time. Life Room is like that, with bad actors showcasing unfocused conflict with each other.

Funny how this “random” assortment of zombie survivors all ended up being people of the same general age and socioeconomic class…

Now, Ray pretty obviously didn’t set out to make a bad movie, and there are several scenes in the script that indicate that his heart was in the right place. That the scenes do the opposite of their inferred intent, i.e., to lend depth to the characterizations of the five people trapped together, is terribly unfortunate. I’m referring to the lengthy flashbacks to which almost every character is entitled. We learn, for example, that Lilly tried to escape with her father, their was food stolen by a neighbor they’d known for years, and her father ultimately sacrificed himself so she could get away. We learn that Jeffrey and his wife were enjoying a staycation at home thanks to what they assumed was a relatively minor flu outbreak, and then his wife got chomped because he left the door unlocked when he came home from getting supplies. And we learn that Brad let only barely-infected friend get attacked by a fully zombified friend to save himself. None of the flashbacks tell us anything we really need to understand the characters involved . Only Brad’s even gives continuity to character traits in evidence, and we really didn’t need the flashback to tell us that he’s the ultimate pragmatist; he spends all of his time in the present asking about bite marks on injured parties and making plans to jettison dead weight if worst comes to worst.

“Boogah! And furthermore, boogah!”

The movie’s main setting, a church, becomes its biggest missed opportunity — two of them, really. One would think that, in a movie about life, death, undeath, etc., that a church setting would be used to intensify (or at least reference) issues of spiritual and eschatological importance, as well as matters of community. As it is, no one once mentioned theology — even Marcus, who’s got a key to the place — and community is an overlooked feature as well. It turns out that the gymnasium is full of corpses which come back to life and attack, but instead of being stunned that his fellow parishioners have become the living dead, Marcus only mentions once, “I knew these people!” without follow-up in mid-bicker. As well, one would think that a church abandoned and beset by the undead would at least be visually interesting, but the building as a whole and the life room in particular looks more like a generic community center than a place of worship. We spend most of our time outside, in the life room, in the gymnasium, above the ceilings, and in a kitchen in mid-remodel; late in the game we do see the sanctuary, but it goes by quickly in mid-chase, with no attention paid to it. It would have been better just to term the location a community center (they still could have shot it in the same location!) and not have the weight of unfulfilled potential over the whole movie.

Yes, like you just don’t care.

I’ve placed heavy blame on the script and the quality of acting, but there are also technical factors which contribute to the general unimpressive nature of the finished product. The whole thing, save some of the flashbacks, takes place at night, in a location in which there putatively isn’t any power (although that’s inconsistent). If you think that that means dim and grainy footage without adequate lighting, you’re right. And the music score, which Eric Ray also provides, consists of two pieces: a two-bar sequence of chords covered by arpeggios, replayed ad infinitum, and… the same sequence of chords, but faster and with some percussion. Even had the rest of the movie been engaging, the music would have guaranteed complaints of tedium.

“As soon as these zombies realize that glass is breakable, we’re in really deep water.”

Life Room isn’t maliciously bad, nor was it constructed by the terminally talentless. But it is a movie made by people who didn’t know how to make a good movie. If it proves to be a growing experience for all involved, then the world of independent cinema will be better for it. If, instead, it is insisted to be as work of “misunderstood genius” by those who made it, then I fear that no one who made this movie will ever make a better one.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 10
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0