13 EERIE – I'm as tired of zombie films as anyone else, but I decided to give '13 Eerie' a go because some reviews seemed to suggest there was something about it. It follows some trainee CSI types who are put through the wringer by their tutor, who's left corpses lying around a deserted island for the purpose of crime scene analysis. When the interns get to work dissecting their allotted cadavers, they start to notice that things on the island may be a little amiss – for example those dudes running around in prison jumpsuits who appear to be, like, rotting or something? Yes, apparently the island once hosted a prison whose inmates' DNA was altered by covert FBI experiments or similar, so no one should be that surprised when those former cons turn up as zombies, although frankly '13 Eerie' is the kind of film where back-story is delivered in a couple of sentences through the side of the mouth between action scenes. I quite enjoyed '13 Eerie'. With its bleak, forlorn island location it manages to evoke some atmosphere, plus it plays it straight – there are no real stabs at comedy horror here, otherwise I'd have tuned out after ten minutes. The zombies are quite scary in a way, seeming more like savage beasts than shamblers. They're really sadistic too, and look like they're having a great time when they nosh down on the hapless studes in scenes of surprising gore. All of this is pretty good, and enough to mark out '13 Eerie' from the DTV hordes. It does have its problems. It's well paced, but there's no tension. Once we know what the deal is ie. scenes of bloodshed, lots of running around and hiding and a coach that crashes twice, we know we can expect little more – it's not as if we're waiting for some really drastic emotional resolution or a suspenseful reveal. It also feels a bit 'TV' in places, I think because of the very generic sounding musical cues and the shot on HD look. If it'd been more 'cinematic', I think it would have gained something. Still, even with these flaws '13 Eerie' entertained well, and I only started checking my watch after an hour in. If you want to see some gory, straight, no brains zombie action then you could do much worse than check out '13 Eerie'. From the director of the massively overrated 'Wolfcop'.
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