"The sound is driving me crazy!" Mickey's not wrong. Of all the ways to spend an evening, being trapped with your friend as your car is attacked by zombies isn't the best way to go. "Kind of nice I think," retorts Ben. "Like the sound of rain on a tin roof." Welcome to The Battery, a quirky little road movie about friendship, the mundanity of life and zombies.
In a world saturated by horror films it's refreshing to experience a zombie movie that feels faintly original. Maybe it's the hippy vibe that's most rewarding, or perhaps we should praise the breezy soundtrack coursing through its veins. Truth is, it's astonishing what you can achieve with a meagre budget when there is a competent director at the helm. Writer, director and star, Jeremy Gardner, is certainly that man.
The Battery is a restrained horror movie for the most part, a hippy-trippy road movie that exists in a zombie universe, but the minimalistic approach adds weight to irregular bouts of undead bloodshed. The indie soundtrack provides a dreamlike vibe, which gives the final act more impact as inevitability comes-a-knocking on the windscreen. It's funny too, in a natural, almost subdued kind of way. I've never seen anybody jack off to a zombie attack before. That I'll take with me.
"If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a fucking zombie." The Battery is worth a look if you're jaded by the zombie sub-genre. Jeremy Gardner and Adam Cronheim have produced in ninety minutes what the writers of The Walking Dead have been trying to achieve for the past four years; an affecting drama with characters you truly care about. Good stuff.
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