The first thing that should worry you about this film before even watching it are the words prominently displayed on it's poster stating that it is "A worthy successor to Shaun of the Dead". After watching the movie I decided to go and read the full review where that little excerpt was taken from, just to make sure that the words 'This is not' didn't come immediately before or after it, because this is not a worthy successor to Shaun of the Dead and a worthy successor to Shaun of the Dead this is not.
In 1989 a family flying from Venezuela to Brazil crashed in the dense forest of an unexplored part of the Amazon rain forest. The tribe that lived there had never seen TV or movies, never heard of horror or zombies, yet I would bet my first born child's soul that with the home video camera that the tribe found in the wreckage, they would manage to make a better horror/comedy zombie film than what the makers of Stalled delivered to us.
First things first, Stalled is about a janitor working in a large office block who sneaks into the ladies restroom to quickly use one of the toilets, while in there the zombie apocalypse happens and he get's trapped. They should of made a movie about a person trapped in the toilets with a TV playing this movie and no way to turn it off, at least that would be true horror.
There are 3 main problems with this movie, firstly the camera-work is just horrible. Close ups and weird angles that are obviously meant to make the movie look interesting do nothing except make the movie look like a bunch of film students were given a camera with no teacher around to tell them when they were doing things wrong. Also it just looks cheap, it doesn't have that movie feel to it, it looks more like a half decent home made video posted on Youtube.
The 2nd problem is the acting, especially by the actor playing the main character. He is the writer of this movie and unfortunately for us he decided to play the lead role as well, a lead role where the character is the only character on screen for 95% of the movie. He can not act. I could give any of you reading this a copy of the script, on the day it was to be filmed, and I would expect that all of you could deliver your lines better than he could. I will be surprised if his acting career in the future entails anything more exciting than dressing up in a giant animal suit and playing Roger the giant Rabbit in a pantomime for preschoolers, even then he wouldn't be first choice for any director. But acting in a horror comedy film isn't that important, not when you have a witty script filled with humorous and/or dangerous situations for our characters to find themselves in........
...and that brings us to the last, and possibly the biggest problem with this comedy horror film. It just doesn't successfully deliver on the horror or the comedy. The comedy is school boyish at best, not what we have become used to from British films over the last few years. The first "funny" scene in the film is when the janitor, stuck in a stall in the ladies toilets, contemplates masturbating to two scantily clad women who walked in and decided to start making out with each other for no real reason after they had been talking about what men they liked. At least I think it was meant to be funny, either that or it was meant to be disturbing, if it was meant to be disturbing then the filmmakers succeeded. The comedy goes downhill after that with jokes and gags that just don't work. The horror on the other hand is non existent, it doesn't miss like the comedy does, it just isn't there, sure there are zombies and we see people get eaten, but there is no tension, no sense of claustrophobia (which is quite an achievement for a movie set inside a toilet cubicle),no panic, no urgency and absolutely zero fear shown by the leads. I can think of pretty much any horror comedy movie and all of them had more horror in them than this did, even the Scary Movie franchise, and for a movie that is meant to be a horror comedy but isn't funny and has no scares, that's a problem.
I'll leave now, I will admit that this movie left me thinking about it long after I had finished watching it, and that thought was "Is it irony that this movie is set entirely in a toilet and turned out to be a big steaming pile of sh...........?"
I give it 2 stars out of 10. One for the camera operator managing to keep the camera pointed in the right direction and another for the brilliant portrayal of a toilet played by a very talented toilet.
In 1989 a family flying from Venezuela to Brazil crashed in the dense forest of an unexplored part of the Amazon rain forest. The tribe that lived there had never seen TV or movies, never heard of horror or zombies, yet I would bet my first born child's soul that with the home video camera that the tribe found in the wreckage, they would manage to make a better horror/comedy zombie film than what the makers of Stalled delivered to us.
First things first, Stalled is about a janitor working in a large office block who sneaks into the ladies restroom to quickly use one of the toilets, while in there the zombie apocalypse happens and he get's trapped. They should of made a movie about a person trapped in the toilets with a TV playing this movie and no way to turn it off, at least that would be true horror.
There are 3 main problems with this movie, firstly the camera-work is just horrible. Close ups and weird angles that are obviously meant to make the movie look interesting do nothing except make the movie look like a bunch of film students were given a camera with no teacher around to tell them when they were doing things wrong. Also it just looks cheap, it doesn't have that movie feel to it, it looks more like a half decent home made video posted on Youtube.
The 2nd problem is the acting, especially by the actor playing the main character. He is the writer of this movie and unfortunately for us he decided to play the lead role as well, a lead role where the character is the only character on screen for 95% of the movie. He can not act. I could give any of you reading this a copy of the script, on the day it was to be filmed, and I would expect that all of you could deliver your lines better than he could. I will be surprised if his acting career in the future entails anything more exciting than dressing up in a giant animal suit and playing Roger the giant Rabbit in a pantomime for preschoolers, even then he wouldn't be first choice for any director. But acting in a horror comedy film isn't that important, not when you have a witty script filled with humorous and/or dangerous situations for our characters to find themselves in........
...and that brings us to the last, and possibly the biggest problem with this comedy horror film. It just doesn't successfully deliver on the horror or the comedy. The comedy is school boyish at best, not what we have become used to from British films over the last few years. The first "funny" scene in the film is when the janitor, stuck in a stall in the ladies toilets, contemplates masturbating to two scantily clad women who walked in and decided to start making out with each other for no real reason after they had been talking about what men they liked. At least I think it was meant to be funny, either that or it was meant to be disturbing, if it was meant to be disturbing then the filmmakers succeeded. The comedy goes downhill after that with jokes and gags that just don't work. The horror on the other hand is non existent, it doesn't miss like the comedy does, it just isn't there, sure there are zombies and we see people get eaten, but there is no tension, no sense of claustrophobia (which is quite an achievement for a movie set inside a toilet cubicle),no panic, no urgency and absolutely zero fear shown by the leads. I can think of pretty much any horror comedy movie and all of them had more horror in them than this did, even the Scary Movie franchise, and for a movie that is meant to be a horror comedy but isn't funny and has no scares, that's a problem.
I'll leave now, I will admit that this movie left me thinking about it long after I had finished watching it, and that thought was "Is it irony that this movie is set entirely in a toilet and turned out to be a big steaming pile of sh...........?"
I give it 2 stars out of 10. One for the camera operator managing to keep the camera pointed in the right direction and another for the brilliant portrayal of a toilet played by a very talented toilet.