The Battery (2012)

Absolutely Fantastic

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

I'm truly astounded by the mediocre rating for this superb little film. The Battery has humor, horror, character and visual style. It packs more cleverness into each scene than most movies - including those with 10 or 100 times the budget - manage in their entire length.The story is deliberately slim: two average guys (who happen to be baseball players) wander the countryside some time after the zombie apocalypse. One of them is easy going, happy to take each day as it comes. The other is lonely, living in denial and longing for his old life and our vanished civilization. That contrast is played out in a series of vignettes, each with a sly and subtle point.The dialog is very sharp, and the two leads are played to perfection. The pace and style of the film are unusual: it really feels like a camping holiday, where there's no hurry about anything. It's also hilariously self-aware. This is the kind of zombie movie where the characters have actually seen every previous zombie movie. Call it a post-zombie road-trip movie. It comments on the genre, while extending it in an interesting new direction. It lets us get to know its characters, slowly but thoroughly, and shows us how average people might really feel in a world empty of people but filled with undead menace.The ending came as a bit of a surprise to me, but it made more and more sense the longer I thought about it. This definitely is a movie you'll want to think about. One that will stay with you. Top-notch, on every level.

Initially, the world following a zombie holocaust (which is never really explained – they are just there, and have been for some considerable time) is almost an idyllic one; this story is set entirely in the country, where the creatures are less likely to frequent, according to Ben. He and Mickey are two young men who have been thrown together as a result of the catastrophe, and have formed a spiky, yet amusing friendship, and the lack of structure society now has allows them time to appreciate nature, to go about things at a leisurely pace. Only occasionally, when a zombie is discovered in a car they want to use, or a building they enter, do things become unpleasant – but Ben in particular, has become so casual about the creatures, he will shoot them amidst a conversation with Ben! There are many set-pieces here that offset the horror with the darkest humour: Mickey awoken from his slumber in the car to find an 'attractive' young female zombie attempting to get in, and being unable to resist a round of masturbation as she rubs herself against the window – only to be shocked out of his pleasure as the woman is shot by Ben, who then disappears into the woodland howling with laughter; Ben equipping the sleeping Mickey with a baseball bat as he lies in the bedroom of a house they've commandeered and then pushing a zombie into the room and holding the door shut, in a bid to force his friend to overcome his aversion to killing; there is radio contact made with other survivors, but in a cruel twist, these people want nothing to do with Ben and Mickey. The final set-piece is the biggest – trapped inside an immobile van surrounded by zombies. These undead creatures are less violent than in many other films, but the fact remains their bites are deadly, and they never tire – so when hours turn into days for Ben and Mickey's incarceration, surrounded always by rasping, moaning creatures dolefully attempting entry, it is only a matter of time before a decision has to be made (when we last see him, Ben is staggering away from the marauding masses who seem incapable of catching up with him, with begs the question – why didn't the two men make a run for it earlier?).Jeremy Gardner, who writes and directs, is Ben – outwardly a laconic layabout but actually a methodical thinker mentally the stronger of the two; Adam Cronheim plays Mickey, who reveals himself to be finding it more difficult to cope with what has happened and has a longing for female company – indeed, it is that longing that helps cause their downfall. The relationship between the two is the main focus of 'The Battery', and they hold attention throughout, whilst the zombies are deliberately kept in the background, their existence commonplace. It presents a different take on familiar backdrop and contains little in the way of blood and gore. With that in mind, it is hugely recommended viewing.

A really smart and refreshing offering to a saturated genre, I thought. Okay, some of the acting is a tad mediocre in places, but the story makes up for it nicely. The fact that this movie was made on a budget of $6000 is startling. They've used that money cleverly by keeping things compact and neat, and by concentrating on just the main characters - which you would expect from a small film, of course. I've seen a lot of negative things written on here about the film's third act. I, myself, enjoyed it. And I think that your appreciation of it will all depend on what you're expecting from a film. If you're looking for a special effects-laden Hollywood blockbuster with no substance this isn't the film for you. However, if you want a well written, and at times, claustrophobic little horror flick, you'll enjoy this.Great effort.

Zombies are the most fun of all movie monsters, fun for a bunch of reasons. A crucial one is that the zombie world where humanity has been overturned and streets are empty is so malleable and so easy to explore and imagine. What would you do? The zombie discussion over drinks practically guides itself, invites a spontaneous storytelling.This film is one of those discussions that a group of friends turned into a film. Two guys walk around a zombie countryside somewhere in America trying to make do, encountering the occasional zombie(s). The result is guaranteed to be more organic than say a vampire saga; the makers didn't have to worry about the whole chronicle, it was enough for them to place themselves in the zombie world for improvised edges of life to follow.They don't bother with a story of explanations or longwinded scope, far more effective to convey the collapse is for one of them to simply turn on the car radio and get nothing but static.So this alone ensures it's interesting to watch but inbetween these moments of survival, there's empty time that has to be somehow filled and leaves room for an artistic self to come to the fore. And so while the limitations of the zombie world guide them to pluck some worthwhile scenarios, this artistic self that bridges them (and is about youth languishing with nothing to do) is merely cute.Every so often a different song plays over a montage of them sitting around or walking, probably the same indie songs the filmmakers like, lazy after a while because it's a short-term music video effect. And the whole last segment with the two of them trapped in a car, the zombies are here concealed and it becomes about the two of them hanging around, they get drunk, mop and fool around. You might as well imagine it as the livingroom where they bantered about what turned out to be this film, one of the two guys is actually the filmmaker.So the creative self shows here clearly in the midst of things, it always does. It's not dishonest, it's a snapshot of who these guys are, filling the gaps with what they would do, being dudes; it's just not interesting to watch.They only barely pull back at the last moment from a trite finale, probably realizing it would have been too cute even for them.