Autumn

This is the second time I've seen this film, one that gets totally trashed on various review sites and rates only 2.2 on the IMDb. Since Amazon was giving it free on Prime I thought I'd check it out to see if it was as bad as I originally thought. It actually improved for me on second viewing and I upped my IMDb rating from one star to three. Though even its technical aspects are rated poorly by viewers, I found the cinematography at times quite good, and there are good shots of Autumn leaves and such. The film was made in the Hamilton, Ontario area (on the western tip of Lake Ontario) which explains the pictures of the Queen on the wall, the accents (which actually sound more British than Canadian), and yet the signs in stores in dollars and driving on the right side of the road.The film is based on the first book of a popular book series by David Moody, who wrote six altogether. If that sounds too long for a basic zombie series, it is. The film, in fact, was technically called Autumn I - they had great hopes here. Autumn gets wildly and totally trashed on book review sites, mostly for poor writing and lots of examples are given so you can't really disagree. But when it was rejected by every publisher he gave it away for free on the internet and it became a runaway hit. In his defense I will say that his later books and book series get better reviews, so he seems to have learned something.The six-volume origin of the source material explains why it takes a long time for the zombies to literally get moving, do anything but bump into things, and only at the very end become violent and flesh eating. This was my main objection the first time. I expected at least a standard zombie scenario, but here you just walk through h zombies because they don't do anything. The survivors end up in the usual remote farm house and when they decide to fortify the grounds they use a waist-high fence you buy rolled up, the kind of fence you use to keep the dog out of the garden. And it keeps the zombies out. Really! So, yes, it's really lame in many ways. It's also incredibly slow at nearly two hours and the director pads it with irrelevant dream sequences, futile excursions and what all, even though it would have been better as a tighter film. The whole David Carradine sequence must have been added just to have his name. It's totally irrelevant and if it was cut you wouldn't miss a thing. The acting overall is okay, though the way the script has them acting is often illogical and stupid. The zombie makeup is different, an oily mix of red and black all over the faces and lots of bad teeth; it was one of the things that was effective.So the second time around I sort-of liked it since I knew not to expect a real zombie fest. It's a moody take of a small group's journey into total despair. I'm not recommending it, but if you're in the mood for something like that, it's okay. And having seen a huge number of zombie movies I can assure you there are worse.

Not sure what all the hype was. I side stepped the book because of a few no so thrilling reviews and had done the same for the movie until last night. My only take away that could be favorable was the one somewhat likable character. Carl was played decent enough and had a reason for most things he did that I found tolerable. The other two merely proved something I have been saying a while now. Zombies want to eat your brains, and in the cases of people with little brain matter it takes them a while to get around to going for them. Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz and my buddy at work would be save for years.Seriously though, what was there to like about this movie? What was innovative except the zombies evolved into killing machines over months rather than days which most of the genre used? I found the two main characters more aggravating than worthwhile or likable. Couple pf points on that.SPOILER ALERT.Big strike 1 against the guy in the first couple of minutes. He is an educator, and when his students start getting sick....he stands there looking only slightly confused. If all of them had hurled then keeled over a exactly the same time within a 10 second period, maybe. But the scene took a couple minutes and gave the impression it was even longer. We hear so often about amazing things educators do, yet this mooch stands there doing one of the better zombie impressions in the movie. Then sort of saunters out of the place when the bell rings. I'm supposed to like a guy that is going to let my child die without even a reaction?Girl buries head in the sand, effectively. Under the covers with head phones on so she doesn't have to deal with things. Yet this is going to be our heroine who survives when most others can't? Of course, all she really needed was to get with teacher and all would be good. Because Mr. and Ms. Pretentious were going to make a great couple.See why I called the two of them pretentious? They said and did a lot of the right things, but did so from a soap box above the mere commoners who must die eventually. Neither established themselves at any point as being a better survivor than a redneck 12 year old, but still they must be superior...because the author said so?Okay, enough for now. The main thing I take away from this and so many of these movies is that a lot of people are going to suck it in the apocalypse. Mostly people in the cities and the East and West coast. Apparently you can include Canada in that grouping now. At this point I only have a reasonable expectation of seeing a few scattered people that went to Zombieland, a few cockneys (Cockneys vs Zombies...excellence.) and whatever group Sean (of the Dead) was among surviving. Most of the others are only going o survive until the zombies have finished the brains they can actually find. The brain dead writers and actors and directors of these lame stream movies get theirs while dude is still trying to find Twinkies.1 star for Carl and nothing else/

If your into anything and everything zombie then it is worth a watch. My partner has all the books and so had waited for this film for years to add it to his collection. It's only been watched once and maybe will again someday. It's pretty much 'okay'.

Good

If you enjoyed reading David Moody's Autumn books you will probably want to give this film a go. As long as you realise it was made on a very low budget you won't be disappointed.

I've read the books and found them very enjoyable.So is the film.The budget was low but I think that the director did a pretty good job.The story is convincing, there's an oppressing anguish that doesn't leave you till the end and that's how an horror movie should be.I'm not convinced about two things though: first I don't get the role of D. Carradine, not only of the actor but more precisely of the character, it doesn't make very much sense and second the end is a little bit too rushed.Otherwise I would have rated it 5 stars.

What a load of rubbish. The picture is bad, sound is bad, and lighting (when in dark) is awful. Looks like a good film from the cover of the dvd but it really isn't. Waste of an hour and 50 mins! Worst zombie apocalyptic film i've ever seen. Not worth watching budget zombie films. There was no action at all, the zombie's only killed a dog and the main character at the end. Boring film!