Colin Review

Where Andrew Parkinson's 1998 film I, Zombie: The Chronicles Of Pain dissected a man's descent into the putrefaction of zombiehood, Marc Price's Colin documents an Everyman's day to day zombiefied existence once he's joined the ranks of the shuffling deceased, ten minutes in. This is, it need hardly be said, a great premise even in a sub-genre infested with every variation on this moth-eaten theme conceivable. You can find zombie babies, Nazi zombies, zombie clowns, lesbian zombies, zombie presidents and a zombie Jesus out there in the zombieland that is the horror section of any well-stocked DVD store, so zombie hats zombily doffed to Price for this fresh zombie concept.

An original concept is nevertheless harder to market than a nice grabby fact or figure, so what you'll probably already know about Colin is that it was made for the dead reasonable sum of £45, making other famously low-budget flicks like The Blair Witch Project ($60,000) or Clerks ($27,000) look positively Titanic. One of FrightFest 2009's big talking points, the shock for Colin's cast and crew was that their camcorder movie found a distributor and would be lurching into cinemas that October, with the film's director confessing "I really thought it was a joke when I was told."

His disbelief isn't exactly misplaced; Colin is a world away from the high production values of most multiplex fare and will most likely have those unfamiliar with low budget filmmaking scratching their heads at the lack of polish. For filmmakers despairing over a lack of funding, it ought to act as a red rag - given the budget available, this is impressive stuff and proves that while resources are not to be sniffed at, it is possible to tell a simple story well without undue expense.