STATE OF EMERGENCY (2011)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed by Turner Clay
Written by Turner Clay
Starring Jay Hayden, Andy Stahl, Tori White, Scott Lilly, Kathryn Todd Norman, & McKenna Jones

Though I’ve heard that this film was shot on a low budget, this zombie flick sure doesn’t seem that way. Borrowing from both 28 DAYS LATER and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, STATE OF EMERGENCY proves that the zombie genre is still alive and twitching.

Describing the beginning of this film might make a few roll their eyes. An explosion at a chemical plant infects a town and the government soon quarantines the entire area. A solitary man, after losing his wife, must make his way through a post-apocalyptic world in search of safety and maybe other survivors. The bulk of this movie is a lone man against the unknown tale as he tries to figure out what has happened and what to do about it. Though we are fed snippets of the events leading up to the man’s solitude, we aren’t told straight away, which is part of the beauty of this film. Like I said, the first moments of this film had me thinking I was watching 28 DAYS LATER all over again. The use of the same font for a title didn’t help much either.

Yet there are some fantastic scenes which save the film and set a dire mood in STATE OF EMERGENCY where the lone man, played by Jay Hayden, views a solitary zombie from afar. These scenes are haunting in that most recently; excess in zombies is the new trend. We’re so used to seeing masses of zombies “comin’ atcha” that I think it’s a lost art to focus on one lost soulless undead figure and capitalize on how horrific that can be. STATE OF EMERGENCY does this extremely well.

Strong performances by the actors, some cleverly edited scenes of action and violence, and some really great computer-generated images to widen the scope that make the limited locales look like it is actually happening in a war zone make STATE OF EMERGENCY the type of zombie movie I’d love to see more of. If more zombie films like this existed that maximize character and scares over convention and excess, that been-there-done-that feeling one gets when seeing yet another zombie film available would not be so common today. Though it doesn’t offer a cure for the zombie holocaust, STATE OF EMERGENCY is the surefire antidote for zombie movie fatigue.

Check out the trailer here!!