Colin (2008) Reviews

• One of the most intelligent zombie movies ever made.

  Parkingtigers2008-10-04

  I was lucky enough to catch a screening of this movie at the Sci-fi Oktoberfest at the Apollo Cinema in central London. It was the first movie in a zombie quadruple-bill, an all night gorefest. Quite frankly I was expecting this unknown low-budget horror to be as awful as it sounded, but it actually turned out to be the best movie of the night in many ways. The director and main star of the film were both in attendance, and I had a chance to congratulate Marc Price on creating a damn fine little movie on what was clearly a shoestring budget. Let's get the downsides out of the way first. The ultra-low budget really does hurt the film. The camera-work and lighting are the biggest victims, in that what might have been intended as a naturalistic documentary style is actually just a mess of incredibly shaky video footage. Marc Price admitted that he was unhappy with the dark/night scenes as they were still perhaps a bit too dark. On the plus side, the sounds and music are very well done and they manage to carry the sometimes dodgy visuals. The real lure of this film however, is the the story. Rather than explaining the hows, the whats and the whys of this particular zombie apocalypse, it simply focuses on a single zombie and follows his shambling journey from death to undeath while civilisation comes to a grinding halt in the background. Other movies in the genre have the zombies as a faceless horde of implacable eating machines, but "Colin" plucks one half-eaten face from the crowd and makes him a highly believable character. I never thought this would happen, but I felt genuine empathy for Colin at times. As he shuffles around a London that is collapsing in upon itself, various groups of human survivors cross his path offering snapshots of other untold stories that are occurring at the same time. There is the man being slowly and quietly eaten to death, the group of grim-faced zombie-hunters, the man with a secret in his cellar, the grieving sister ... every one of these stories gives hints of the wider chaos that must be going on, making this a very believable, and very English, zombie uprising. This is a film that absolutely deserves to be seen by a wider audience. I can only hope that a distribution company picks it up and ensures that it gets a full release in the same way that other low budget films like Blair Witch Project and Open Water did. Ideally, I'd like to see a studio offer Marc Price the money to make a shot for shot remake but with professional level equipment. The story is very strong, it seems that even zombies can have a character arc and a sense of purpose, and there are so many clever ideas in both the script and the execution. There are some moments of subtle humour, lashings of blood, and at least one moment that was genuinely terrifying. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing more work from this novice director, there is real talent on display here. It might look low budget, but script- wise this is as strong as anything being released by the major studios. If you have ever enjoyed a good zombie film, then do seek out "Colin" because it is truly a fine example of the genre. It's quite literally a film for people with braiiiiiiiiins.

• Colin

  DelBongo2009-11-11

  All of the recent coverage of this film in the mainstream print press has inspired the expectation in many (myself very much included) that it has somehow transcended its origins as a film that cost 40 quid to make. It hasn't. Looking exactly as you'd expect a £40 zombie movie to look (replete with a complete disregard for cinematography, alarmingly hammy acting and plenty of unconvincing, off- colour bloodletting) Colin is an extraordinarily hard slog. This is particularly true of its opening half hour, which is almost totally bereft of dialogue and filled with way too many ugly and aimless shots that last at least four or five times longer than they need to, without any justification. Despite the odd moderately impressive exterior shot, Colin's "story" is one constructed around the constant need to justify the shooting locations - which are all, for the vast majority of the time, someone's drab and under-lit living room. The finale, which bucks this trend by taking place in someone's garden, is five utterly exhausting minutes of ketchup, shaky-cam and non-stop shouting; the sheer, belligerent pointlessness of which angered me so much that I almost flung a shoe through my TV. Spades of kudos must go to the enterprising young sprouts who clearly worked like dogs to get this film made, and I'm thrilled to live in an age where filmmakers of this level can get their work seen and distributed nationally on DVD, but to be brutally honest this is film-making of an extremely sloppy vintage, and the complete lack of plot renders it monumentally, deadeningly boring. A friend of mine remarked that he'd rather sit down in front of a decade's worth of his neighbour's holiday videos than sit through Colin again. Ditto.

• Colin gives me hope that I too can sell my home movies.

  poolandrews2010-08-08

  Colin is set in London where a mysterious virus has been been bringing the dead back to life as flesh eating zombies, the city is in disarray & panic. Colin (Alastair Kirton) is an ordinary bloke, unfortunately Colin's been bitten by a zombie & thus is infected. Poor old Colin is doomed to die & then come back as a mindless flesh eating zombie. Colin has to adjust to being a zombie & deal with all those nasty humans who try to kill him, this is his story... This English production was shot, edited, written, produced & directed by Marc Price & I am finding all the positive comments absolutely baffling as Colin is surely one of the inept & tedious films ever made. For a start lets a get a couple of things straight, Colin is not the first film to be told from a zombie's point of view neither it is the first film to try & create sympathy for it's flesh eating undead despite what some may say. Where to start? To be fair the concept of a zombie film told from a zombie's perspective is cool but with such a low budget & very little talent on show the concept was doomed to die as we get endless scenes of Colin stumbling about doing nothing in particular. Occasionally Colin meets some humans who are being attacked by other zombies or are themselves attacking zombies, we never meet anyone or learn anything about anyone or the situation they find themselves in. Colin doesn't seem to take sides, neither the zombies or the people are seen as heroes or villains either way. Nobody says a sentence for like half an hour into the film, Colin doesn't speak until the very end in which he has a flashback revealing what happened at the start which should have been at the start rather than the end as it might have made us relate to Colin a bit more or emphasise with his transformation from ordinary bloke to mindless zombie. With zero character development or any sort of plot other than Colin wandering around the odd London street it's hard to see why Colin is getting so much praise. It's not a study of society in a crisis situation as we never see the wider society, only a few random people & the subplot about Colin's sister taking him home goes nowhere & like everything else here feels like padding. At over an hour & a half long Colin surely is one of the most uneventful & dullest films ever released, no character's & no plot basically add up to one long bore where the initial intriguing premise becomes old after about two minutes. Right, rumour has it that Colin cost £45 to make (about $72) & all I have to say is where did all the money go? Obviously shot in people's houses & without permission on a council estate somewhere (central London is never seen) on a crappy hand-held camcorder (I think my Samsung Wave mobile phone HD camera can record clearer & sharper video than seen in Colin) Colin looks awful in every aspect. From the terrible lighting to the annoying shaky camcorder crap, whenever anything happens on screen it seems like it was shot by someone have a seizure or epileptic fit since the jerkiness is truly hideous & serves no artistic or practical function. There are scenes that are so badly lit, so dark & so shaky that it's literally impossible to tell what's happening, that cannot be right & Colin is just one long eyesore. The make-up effects are poor, there's some fake blood splashed around & some bits of meat probably brought from a local butcher for the zombies to chew on but there's no proper special effects here. Probably edited on a PC or in camera Colin really is nothing more than a home movie, & a bad one too. Colin is a mindless zombie so the guy playing didn't have too much to do, the odd person that pops up are pretty terrible. Colin is a film that I hated, I thought it was an ugly eyesore of a film that bored me to senseless & wasted a potentially decent idea. Maybe with an actual budget & actual filmmakers at the helm the concept may one day be turned into something good. Despite all the glowing praise I struggle to find one aspect of Colin that I liked.

• An original take on the traditional zombie movie

  DVD_Connoisseur2009-11-01

  "Colin" is an amazing achievement, given its shoestring budget. Marc Price's ambitious independent and original zombie film shows us proceedings through the undead's perspective (the role of Colin played by Alastair Kirton). This is a genuinely moving film which contains a number of unforgettable scenes. Taking the genre beyond mere blood and guts (but there are plenty of juicy entrails and examples of body dismemberment on display to keep the gorehound's interest fixed on the proceedings), "Colin" is a thought provoking, rather tragic, movie. 7 out of 10. Recommended viewing. Price shows genuine talent and it will be interesting to see where he takes the viewer next.

• Do not watch this movie !

  amy-skolnick12010-12-04

  If I could go lower than a 1, I would. This movie has absolutely no point. It's so awful. My friends and I watched this movie for an hour- way longer than we should have- expecting something to happen, but absolutely nothing happened. Do not waste your time and your money to watch this movie. It's literally a camera following a zombie while it walks around town and someone occasionally gets eaten. We tried to figure out the plot but the film gives you no information about anything. The only reason I know his name was Colin is from the name of the movie.