Zombie films are nothing new and have become even more
popular now that AMC’s The Walking Dead
has become one of the most popular cable shows on the air. The
Revenant (2009) tries to add something new to the zombie genre. In this film Bart Gregory (David Anders) is a
fallen soldier that when his body is returned to the U.S.A. he suddenly awakens
to discover that he is among the undead.
With the help of his best friend he realizes that the only way he can
survive is from the intake of human blood.
Being a soldier of war Bart refuses to kill in order to survive but soon
realizes that he can survive by killing those who are criminals and commit
crimes so he sets out to clean the streets of Los Angeles. But returning to the land of the living is
not what it’s cracked up to be when the woman he used to love realizes that he
has returned and his best friend soon becomes a revenant just like him.
The film has its moments and at times is funny but the gag
of a creature returning to life to kill criminals in order to survive and seek
redemption has been done before (i.e. Joss Whedon’s Angel and the Blade trilogy)
and the film loses its momentum halfway through. The relationship between Bart and his
girlfriend is a background story when it should have been brought to the
forefront.
As written and directed by D. Kerry Prior the script has its
moments and its actually well directed but like I said the comedy is like a
re-occurring gag that gets old very fast.
Anders does his best to bring Bart to undead life but the film’s tone
shifts in the last third of the film to a more serious film and tries to take
itself too seriously which is far too late.
This being said there are a couple on new ideas about the nature of
these revenants not seen in other zombie films that is revealed in the epilogue
(info that should have came much earlier in the film) but this will become
nothing more than another zombie film on an already overpopulated shelf of zombie
films.
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