Autumn   Starring: Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine Brightspark Productions RRP: £17.99 BSPK707 Certificate: 18 Available 10 May 2010

As the last autumn leaves slowly peel away from the trees, a mysterious airborne virus ravages the planet, and within a few hours billions die. Victims suffer horrific deaths as their internal organs liquefy and whole towns expire within minutes. Soon cities become infested breeding grounds for the new apocalyptic virus, and by the end of the first day there are only a handful of survivors. When the dead start to gruesomely reanimate the survivors have naive hopes that the bodies will decompose and simply fall apart but they soon discover that the longer the reanimated corpses are alive the more they learn... and the more they become killing machines...

Autumn is a low budget zombie movie that seems to have no real focus on what sort of story it's trying to tell.

I have to admit I'm no fan of zombie films, mainly because it's a genre with such a narrow structure that every conceivable angle has already been exploited and (if you'll pardon the pun) done to death. So it was no surprise to discover that Autumn brought absolutely nothing new to the table. Which would have been fine if the production had been halfway decent. But no, we have such bad acting, an odd mix of camera styles, lighting and dissolves from one scene to the next that it made me wonder if the editor and director had hired some new editing kit and wanted to use all the available features when cutting together the movie.

There are scenes that are almost bleached out followed by scenes that are just too dark; an awful video montage thrown in for no good reason along with cheesy music; crushed and blackened cars - with no indication that the cars have actually crashed; oh and there's a clown... for f*ck sake! Yes, it started to feel very much like a bad fine art students first year project (but without the mandatory broken doll - although I'm sure if you look hard enough there will be one in there somewhere).

I couldn't work out why all the electricity seemed to go out almost immediately. Nor could I fathom why, when they get a generator going they can watch TV - whose manning the TV station? Although, to be fair, they could be watching DVDs but it does look like they're watching broadcast shows.

There's also the problem that there are a few too many male tantrums; too many men trying to be the alpha male - and it just looks silly and rather childish.

The acting is also terrible, for the most part. The only two actors who turn in believable performances are Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine (who makes a brief appearance towards the end of the film). Everyone else is pretty bad - as though they'd had absolutely no previous acting experience.

There are no extras.

So, a pretty dire movie which will appeal to... eh... I have no idea. Avoid like the plague (do you see what I've done there?)

2

Nick Smithson