Saturday 5 May 2018

Let It Die (2017) - Short Horror Film Review


Let It Die is the latest short horror film from Forte Films Entertainment (The Babyface Killer, Love Eternal: The Silent Film Cut) and to my pleasure it was a zombie film. They also previously did Anna which was another zombie short, but that one was far more an analogy for real world issues, while with this one it felt more film like.

So this clocks in at just under five minutes and plays out like the end of a feature length zombie flick. A zombie girl is chained up in the basement, her father comes downstairs to feed her and talks about how he has failed her as a parent, then he reveals he has only one decision left to make regarding the girl.

I liked how immediately this starts with the first image being of the chained up zombie screaming. There was a feeling of the classic Italian zombie films of the eighties in the look of the zombie in that the makeup is ghoul green and inconsistent. I have said this many times but I often find that less over the top makeup actually works a lot better when it comes to zombies. They don't need to look amazing for them not to still come across as an effective portrayal of a living corpse. Still the zombie here (played by Celina Leroy - The Sin Reapers) looks pretty cool with plenty of blood and gore on her. I also thought her performance felt a little different to the typical zombie in that her screams of anger and anguish felt more human, more like shouts than anything, and her eyes had a look of intelligence and self awareness about them.

The dad played by Adam Ginsberg (Zombie Killers: Elephant's Graveyard) was also good in his role, he displays the appropriate level of anguish at the horror his world has become. I did feel that some of his lines seemed a bit laboured when he lists the never ending ways in which he has failed his daughter when it comes to parenting. Maybe like Anna this too is all an analogy; that if your child turns into a bad person then maybe it is due to bad parenting, and that you ultimately need to take responsibility for your own mistakes.

I enjoyed watching Let It Die, it did enough to please and due to its short length it told a concise little story despite throwing the viewer in at the deep end of the tale. A B-movie short told in four minutes that was a nice little taster of zombie action. It  is freely available to watch on YouTube so I shall include it below.

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