PANDEMIC – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

Pandemic is a found footage film that never manages to feel like one because of it’s passion. Every little detail has been looked after here, and that might be half the reason it works. The beautiful sense of place, and gory action makes for a piece of worthwhile piece.

The plot here is simple. A few operatives are sent into a quarantine zone to retrieve a lost team. Lauren (Rachel Nichols) is the protagonist, and the audience POV character (quite literally) but is hiding something

The fact is found footage is best used to either allow for creeping horror (as in Paranormal Activity 1) or putting the audience in a full on immersive intense situation (as in Cloverfield). Pandemic might benefit from falling a little bit into both. Pandemic does have a fast pace allowing only some of the  suspense to really pay off, but when it does the film rewards you with a dynamic shot of gory action. It’s the meshing of these two genre styles that make Pandemic such an intense watch.

A thin straight to the point screenplay also helps the proceedings. Each element of exposition is built into specific moments of the plot allowing the audience to gain more information as time goes on.The small scale production and found footage shooting of the film  allows it to become split up into sections each providing a new clue as to the rich world right beyond the frame. That’s how a horror film should be structured, and it’s nice to see a film that world builds excitedly through these small vignettes.

The actors are a perfect fit for this project as well. Pandemic is a quieter work of zombie fiction, and it’s nice to see acting in a film like this played straight and not self aware of the inherent and violent frenzy that comes with a zombie film. The screenplay the cast is given is a little heavy-handed skewing off the more consistently engaging world building, but these actors are turning in reliably good work, and have bright futures if they continue too.

Acting and inherent ways in the screenplay for the film’s success sound like the only things that could really make a film like this good, but it’s still not what the film is advertising. The gory POV action is what they’re advertising, and while it’s not quite as important (or well executed) as the trailers suggest it occupies much of the film, and manages to be consistently gory and in its moments scarily effective. A zombie escape in a gym locker room should be held as an example for how found footage action sequences should be filmed. It all comes off a little like “guilt free Maniac” another film that used a first person perspective, but was in the eyes of a serial killer. For better or worse the context of zombies allows the audience to sit back and enjoy the ride as the operatives of the film mow down the hordes that come after them. The direction of these scenes is better executed with the camera acting less shaky and more agile. When it needs to stop and show a kill shot it does without shaking the camera. The filmmakers also made the good decision not to tie the camera down on one person allowing for a perspective from all sides of the action. The hard “R” action combined with well executed camerawork keeps the production from seeming like another cliched, violent, and unnecessary film.

Why Pandemic works so well as a film can be boiled down into one thing. There’s effort put into every part of it. It’s a silly found footage zombie movie with a lot of gore, but someone bothered to make the world interesting, the actors bothered to make the characters however thin they are well rounded as could be, and screenwriter Dustin T. Benson bothered to make his screenplay build a consistently engaging world. Effort goes a long way.

PANDEMIC was on the 2012 Blood List and Hit List. It’s in theaters April 1st and and iTunes April 5th