This is one hell of a horror movie.

Rating: 6/10 (11 July 2011)

This is one hell of a horror movie. Even for someone as jaded as myself, who has become totally jaded to any real horror thrills, I was taken aback by how uncomfortable the movie made me feel. Our heroes, holed up at the now abandoned local mall, join small groups of survivors and find themselves fighting each other as well as the zombies when the plague starts creeping ever close to bringing them all to the brink of annihilation. The zombies have an easy-to-spot weakness: one shot to the head takes them out, but they're extremely fast, and a single bite from them leads to hopeless infection and mindlessness. Although some of the story makes little sense (for instance, if the zombies can only transmit the virus by bite and the heroes are in a mall, couldn't they don the heaviest attire imaginable rather than skimpy t-shirts?), there are lots of great twists and snappy dialogue along with the required creep-outs, gore, and slaughter.
And there's some surprisingly great humor. Easily the most memorable of the light-hearted, break-the-nerves moments is when our heroes are situated atop a roof and challenge a local gun shop owner to take out look-alike zombie celebrities, which he does with ease. It's a much needed laugh to relieve the audience of a lot of built-up jitters.