ZYDECO (2012)

Directed/Written by David Noble
Starring Courtney Shay Young, LaTasha Williams, Elgin Foster, William Hartley, Rhonda Schaubert

I’m not going to lie to you. ZYDECO is not a great film. Everything from the acting to the sound to the camerawork to the story to the makeup effects is lo fi, to say the least. That said, the makers of this film do seem to have done their homework and taken pages from some of the better stalk and slash films.

The story follows a pair of young ladies who evoke a curse from a mystic in small town Louisiana. That curse is named Zydeco. The burly beast is either supposed to be wearing a skull mask or is just done up in some extremely amateur makeup. Nevertheless, Zydeco does his best Jason Voorhees impression tearing people apart and covering great distances without breaking out of a brisk walking pace. The two female leads make their way through the town that obviously doesn’t want them there, only staying a few paces ahead of the unstoppable murdering machine.

The plot is pretty paper thin, yet overly complex at the same time as the film switches locales between Chicago and Louisiana for no real reason. The film does do a great job of establishing an ominous locale with some nice Cajun blues and some cool shots of the local character of the houses and streets of Louisiana.

Don’t go looking for originality here. But if you’re looking to support indie filmmaking, this is a film worth supporting. A lot of emphasis is on the blood and guts and had that emphasis been shifted to story, I might have more to talk about here. ZYDECO also is about ten minutes shy of an hour long, which makes for a brisk viewing, but relatively forgettable as well.

Check out the trailer here!!