Contains mild
spoilers.
Dead Air really
starts well and there were a few moments I started to get carried away. The
premise and situation are interesting, the acting surprisingly strong and
tension and anxiety are allowed to build up with a solid and natural pace. Half
an hour in I found myself invested in the characters and primed to see how it
was all going to pan out. Unfortunately for Dead Air it's when the action
finally shows it face things start to unravel and it all becomes if I'm honest,
a bit of a mess.
It's Friday night
and downtown Los Angeles late night phone-in anchor, the extremely confident
and affable Moseley (Logan Burnhardt) and his small production crew have gone
live on the air. There late night topic for the night is paranoia and as he and
his co-host Gil (David Moscow) play the goofy double act on listeners dumb
enough to air their insanity they start to
receive calls that something particularly nasty is occurring just minutes from
their studio.
As said, the set-up
is good. The viewer like Moseley is a voyeur to the pandemonium engulfing the
city. Taking calls, watching live TV feeds he and in turn us share the
confusion and insanity of what appears to be an actual zombie outbreak and
watching a small screen on a screen, or listening to first hand accounts of
panic and violence things seem to be holding up and the rioting and attacks
seem pretty convincing.
The problems arrive
the same time the zombies do. I'm really not sure what director Corbin Bernsen
had in mind with his strange arm flailing, grabbing, running and punching
antagonists but I can tell you it doesn't work. I've read that writer Kenny
Yakkel didn't actually conceive them as zombies and more like PCP crazies yet somewhere the two ideas have merged to create something that's neither
convincing or frightening. They look like crazy people and act like crazy
people albeit with the barest of make-up and zero blood, but they reanimate seemingly from the
dead, they carry on waving their arms about like deranged octopuses after being
stabbed through the chest and they do go in for flesh (well at least once, near the end). Someone
thought they were doing a zombie film or someone thought half way through it
should be a zombie film; either way, saying they weren't dead and just high
doesn't wash with me.
The frankly
amateurish and unconvincing zombies aren't the only problem though. There arrival brings with it the problem of what to actually do with them once they're there and this seems to have found Bernsen wanting. The build up was energetic, well paced with interesting and witty dialogue and it's like someone flicked a run-out-of-ideas switch and the last hour or so shows none of the earlier promise. The story and action become painfully forced, conversations become trite and predicatable, and
are actually repeated on occasion, and laboured and laughable action sequences
are forced in aplenty. Add a fumbled attempt to add a pro-tolerance, anti-hate
political subtext that concludes the film with a cringe worthy Jerry
Springer-esque final message and it's hard to remember the earlier positives.
I real missed
opportunity where an interesting and original premise is ruined with the idea
it needs to be much more. There's half a
great film here and half a right load of uninspired guff which is only lifted
above mediocrity with extremely solid acting. I'll end by mentioning the
vastly superior Pontypool, which despite the same basic premise had a director and
production crew who understood what it takes to work with a limited budget; go
watch that instead, 4/10.
WTD
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