Shadows of the Dead Movie Review

Not quite a horror movie, Carl Lindbergh's Shadows of the Dead is a unique film experience that will challenge what you think about genre films and polarize audiences who have the chance to see it.

A small box drama with a main cast of two, Shadows offers us a simple premise then spins it wildly. Our main characters -- boyfriend John (Jonathan Flanigan) and girlfriend Jennifer (Beverly Hynds) break down while driving through the woods. Will a psycho come after them? Not this time out. They stumble across what looks like a dead body, and when that turns out to be not the case, John finds himself bit on the neck.

John quickly gets sick, turning a ghastly shade of gray and, er, his heart stops beating. As John rapidly disintegrates, he infects Jennifer, too. They both quickly turn into a sort of cross between vampire and zombie, but this film isn't about people going on a blood-fueled rampage, it's about the bickering that comes along with a death sentence, the guilt over having to eat people, and the horrors of your body turning really, really nasty.

As a character study, I can't think of anything quite this unique. Interview with the Vampire tried it. And Cabin Fever took this premise in the splatter direction. First-time writer/director Carl Lindbergh has a true oddity on his hands here, and moviegoers bored silly by one too many bumps in the night will probably find this film worth checking out.

Unfortunately, as you might expect, the digital video is really rough, and the movie lacks polish. The entire movie is shot in either the dark or the very near dark -- intentionally -- which has the major problem of leaving most of the action relegated to the shadows. Coupled with iffy sound, this means you're often staring at a hazy black screen while listening to muffled voices you can't quite understand.

It's not a bad experience by any means and possibly interpretable as an allegory for what happens when a husband infects his wife with a sexually transmitted disease. Or you can just think of it as the strangest love story of the year.