Ben & Mickey vs. the Dead (2012)

Ben u0026 Mickey vs. the Dead: Directed by Jeremy Gardner. With Jeremy Gardner, Adam Cronheim, Niels Bolle, Alana O’Brien. The personalities of two former baseball players clash as they traverse the rural back roads of a post-plague New England teeming with the undead.

“The thought of yet another low-budget zombie movie filled me with dread, but I was hearing good word of mouth about Jeremy Gardneru0026#39;s $6000 zombie pic THE BATTERY, so I gave it a whirl at Amsterdamu0026#39;s Imagine film festival. And am very glad I did, as it turned out to be probably my favourite film of the all the ones I saw there. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eItu0026#39;s a (nearly) 2-hander about two guys crossing rural New England and, very occasionally, fighting off zombies. The title is a baseball term referring to the partnership between the pitcher and the catcher. Or something – forgive if if Iu0026#39;ve got that wrong; I donu0026#39;t know much about baseball, but it doesnu0026#39;t matter anyway. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnd thatu0026#39;s pretty much all you need to know about the plot. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLike the best zombie films, itu0026#39;s more about the living than the dead. This is a double-pronged character/relationship study (which thankfully never degenerates into the bad soap of The Walking Dead) rather than an action movie and there isnu0026#39;t an awful lot of gore, so younger viewers with ADD might get fidgety. But anyone who enjoys a well-crafted screenplay and nicely-drawn characters will have a blast. The climax, which makes a virtue out of the filmu0026#39;s low budget, is particularly ingenious.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThere are no wobblicam, jitterbug editing, CCTV, found footage, flashy camera effects or modish colour grading. Just a brace of good performances against a backdrop of leafy green countryside in broad daylight, beautifully edited u0026amp; classically filmed so that (and this is a novelty these days) you can actually SEE whatu0026#39;s going on. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAlso has an excellent soundtrack.”