The Horde (France, 2009) - Color, Director(s): Yannick Dahan& Benjamin Rocher
MPAA Rating: NR
[UK: 18]
Approx. 90 min.
Z-rating: 4 stars out of 5
Cheese Factor: 2 stars out of 5
Of course, I had to include some zombie movies for Halloween! They're EVERYWHERE you look now, it's really impossible to escape them. The idea probably isn't anything new either, cops and criminals need to work together to escape a building being overrun by zombies. Where this movie succeeds for me is in the execution. The movie starts with a bunch of cops who find out a drug lord is holed up inside an apartment building. In an unsanctioned operation, these cops seek vengeance for a fallen comrade under the cover of night. At first, I thought this was going to be The Raid with zombies but they're quickly taken hostage by the criminals. As the criminals are squeezing them for information, a zombie randomly breaks into the room and wreaks havoc on everyone inside. They all escape to the roof, only to see the city in chaos before deciding they need to work together in order to survive. At first, the cops are outnumbered and have to follow the drug lord's lead. As the movie goes on, numbers on both sides dwindle and teamwork becomes essential to their survival.
In most zombie movies, people are terrified and confused so they spend a lot of time running from zombies before finally fighting back. SWAT teams that show up usually just shoot at them with assault rifles before being overrun. This is one of the few times I've actually seen people fight them hand-to-hand. The criminals are a bunch of hard asses and one of them is locked in a hallway with two zombies approaching. The guy literally beats them down before pulling out a knife and shanking zombies. I thought that was already pretty bad ass of him but later, we see one of the cops has been separated from the group. They're in a random apartment and she REALLY lays into the zombies. She punches it, headbutts it, puts the boots to it, slams cupboard doors on it, cracks it repeatedly with what I think is a baking pan, before finally dropping a fridge on it. She gives that zombie one of the most savage beatings I've ever seen!
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| That was before they found this! |
Nudity: There's supposedly a scene where they mock a female zombie with her boobs exposed but I can't find that scene anywhere. I hear there's an uncut version of this film, so many I have an edited version?
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| This is the closest thing to nudity I remember seeing |
Gore: Although you can tell that a lot of the headshots and blood spatters are CGI, it's not so bad that it ruins the movie. If you're like me, you've probably seen much better and much worse effects in zombie movies. There's really nothing much to say here since nothing really stands out.
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| Although this one zombie reminded me of Donnie Yen |
Awesome: Pretty awesome. I think it's really hard to find a zombie movie with anything new in it because there's already been every kind of zombie movie imaginable. This just happens to be one of the better ones that hasn't gotten the attention that it deserves. The story is simple yet interesting, check this one out for Halloween if you're looking for some good zombie action with a bit of foreign flavor.