The 2016 zombie movie war directed by John Suits and written by Dustin T. Benson. It’s the story of Dr. Lauren Chase ( Rachel Nichols ), a woman trying to get back to her family during the zombie apocalypse with the help of the military.
PLOT:
Chase works as a doctor for what’s left of the US military. She’s assigned to lead a group on a mission to search for a group of survivors in zombie-infected-LA. Her colleagues are:
Wheeler ( Alfie Allen ) a con turned driver, easily scared
Denise ( Missi Pyle )
& Gunner ( Mekhi Phifer ) Tough black guy
They scower the city in search of the survivors, Chase having never been in the city since the outbreak began. The zombies exist in five differerent stages:
Stage 1 – Mild symptoms including aggresion, still cureable
Stage 2 & 3 – Zombies as we know them, 3’s being the more dangerous ones, uncureable
Stage 4 – Zombies in a coma ( completely pointless to the story )
Stage 5 – Zombies on steroids
The first encounter is in a tunnel with a large horde of probably around 50 zombies who attack the bus. Gunner tells Chase to pretend it’s a game, only to be told to fight like her life is in danger two minutes later when they win but almost die. Also, the entire movie is shot like a first person-shooter. In fact the entire movie feels more like a video game than a movie, but we’ll get to that later.
After another zombie encounter, our characters reach the school, finding a large stock of food. After inspecting the building, they see that all of the ‘survivors’ are actually undead. All of them except Gunner escape. Denise falls, injured Chase stays behind while Wheeler takes off. It turns out Chase’s real name is Rebecca Thomas, she’s been posing as Chase to find her family.
Reuniting with a now infected Wheeler, Chase and Denise find a warehouse with a small group of survivors. Having nothing to lose, he decides to help them. Denise is captured by zombies, who proceed to eat her.
Driver helps Chase find her daughter. The house she’s staying at his invaded by zombies, who eventually eat Driver. A group of soldiers find Chase and her daughter, Chase is shot and the fate of the daughter is left unknown. The End
CONCLUSION:
PFTD failed as a movie. Though I’m sure it was an intentional experiment, the first person camera shots, along with the dialogue made it feel more like a zombie-shooting game without the ability to play than a movie.
The acting was stale, along with the characters. Cardboard cutouts if you will. Driver was trying to be Jesse Pinkman, Chase was trying to be Julianne Moore and most dissapointingly Mekhi Phifer felt like he was doing his best Ice Cube impression. The story itself was fine, the film was just so poorly executed that it took all the good out of it. I’d give this wannabe video game a 1.5/10.
Had they gone with a more traditional camera style, I could have probably bumped it up to a 2, maybe even a 2.5. It really does ruin the feeling of the film.
– The Screenwriter