Episode 115: Live Escape

The Undead Symphony

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A new theme on the found footage horror genre, this is supposedly, but clearly not as we get time updates, a real-time footage horror movie. Written by, directed by and starring Joe Lujan as Pete, with Bryant Smith as his partner Jensen, two cops (bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?) are called to a homeless shelter after the discovery of a body.
IMDB gave it 2.9 and I can see why, as an average of people who loved it or hated it. I can see what Lujan was trying to do. It was the same idea as those cop reality shows with car, hood, dash, vest and head cams recording the day of a number of law enforcement officials. Here they have headcams as they go into the shelter to discover that it is a maze of pitch black rooms they need to illuminate with their torches.
It is claustrophobic, it is quite a good idea, it is just executed poorly. The homeless shelter looks more like a storeroom for theatre sets. The homeless don't look homeless, they look like regular people. The screamers were good, the eaters, but the cops didn't do what cops would do. They had no non-lethal weapons - taser, pepper spray, night stick, and instead spend all their time walking slowly from dark room to dark room before being discovered and having to run.
There a lot of inconsistencies in the characters, their actions and their logic. I mean, if you have assessed the zombies hunt by sound, why not be quiet? Why shout?
Anyway, I watched the sequel before I recorded this, and would have scored it less based on the two movies as a pair. For this on it's own I will score it 4.5/10. I think it was an ok watch. A nice idea, poorly executed. If they had been more like cops with their weapons and tactics, and the location had been better, say an old motel, and it has been less repetitive, it would have scored 5.