Poor lone Survivor (Josh Merrill, who also wrote, produced, and sound edited the film). He’s having a really, uh, hard time. He just lost his girlfriend, whose short life faced a grisly end (which now consistently haunts him), and the world has gone to s**t. An unexplained outbreak has flared up and now the the planet is overrun by ravaging zombies. Survivor’s luck to stay alive has just possibly ran out when he’s ambushed and bitten by a zombie. He’s heard there’s cure for this disease, he just has to find where it’s located before it’s too late. As the title of the film alludes, a bitten victim only has two hours to live as a human before they turn into a mindless, flesh-eating zombie.
2 Hours is an original and thrilling take on this over-saturated genre. We’ve seen victims being bitten and turn into the infected before, but not many have explored a bitten human’s journey and struggle to stay alive. 2 Hours does an excellent job of explaining how the “virus” sets in and turns you. Using rich visuals and sharp dialogue, it explains that the virus sets in when your worst fear eats at you until you literally want to eat at something (or someone) else. As the clock counts down, Survivor’s mind becomes polluted with confusion and anger, but he fights it and continues his journey to find this cure.
Merrill did an exceptional job as Survivor, but the one thing that really kept distracting my focus was his voiceover-the-top narration. He speaks very slowly in a deep voice (i.e. he sounds like he’s just eaten five pot brownies) and his dialogue about his ex-girlfriend and how he sees the world is too dense for this kind of movie; zombie movies should never get sappy. I applaud the attempt, but keep it fun and gory. I’m not here to listen to a man pine over his dead girlfriend, she’s dead along with thousands of others, I’m here to watch him go Norman Bates on the undead.
Despite that one nitpick, 2 Hours does manage to keep the violence fun, trying out new methods which should keep zombie enthusiasts interested and happy. The film is shot in both first and third person. During zombie attacks, the camera switches to first person, and we become Survivor, picking off zombies with his gun just like you’d see in Call of Duty or whatever popular first person shooter game is currently circulating the gaming world. If the director’s intention was to make this feel like a video game, he has indeed succeeded. If not, he should lie and tell people his intent was to make this feel like a video game.
It’s impressive the film is called 2 Hours but manages to get the whole story in its 26 minute running time. I’d like to see these boys take a shot at making this into a feature. Seeing what they could do in a short amount of time, it would be a no-brainer for them to actually make a two hour feature with the exact same storyline. I just hope they take out the sappy mumbo jumbo – love doesn’t always have to be a motivation for staying alive.
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