SNAPSHOT
Deep underground, a second-rate scientist mans a discarded research facility struggling to cope with extreme boredom, a desperate voiceless companion and a mystery he’d really rather not have to solve…Directed by John Lynch, and written by Jon Williams-Nobbs & John Lynch, Eddie is a proof-of-concept short for a feature project set in the same universe. (synopsis via Vimeo)
Eddie is proof positive that just when you think the modern zombie genre has said everything original it can say, that it finds a way to surprise you.
Set at a decommissioned research facility of in the bleak wastes of nowheresville, the short film, which is intended to be the harbinger of a feature film to come, examines what happens to the human psyche when it’s you, a lone undead subject of study and no contact with the outside world.
Funny and profoundly disturbing in equal measure, it explores the limits of humanity in ways that are quite clever, insightful and emotionally resonant, anchored by fine performances by Alan Mandel as Eddie, and Johnny Vivash as the scientists who grows slowly and dramatically mad as the existential pointlessness of the task at hand becomes increasing hard to cope with.
It is part of a fine tradition of zombie storytelling that acknowledges and runs with the idea that the arrival of the undead says as much about those living as it does about hordes of animated corpses coming to feast on them.
Every book, movie and TV show, of which there are many in the zombie genre, ultimately has as it focus an exploration of the human condition and Eddie is no different, giving us an impressively original examination of what happens when the living and the dead come together.
Spoiler alert: It’s everything you expect and nothing at all, gloriously compelling right to its thoroughly unexpected end.
For a full review, check out UK Film review