Days of Darkness (2007)

This is yet another entry into the low budget zombie movie genre.  This time around a comet passes thru the atmosphere of Earth and suddenly most everyone turns into a flesh-eating zombie.  That is except for our fearless band of survivors who are hold up in a retired military base.  Thru an unlikely series of events they discover that the zombies are actually infected by an alien parasite that does some unusual things to the human body.  If you are a male your genitals fall off and are replaced by a sack that gestates a small hairless ape looking alien.  If you are a woman you become pregnant with a squid like creature that has the unfortunate habit of popping out of the easiest place possible on it’s host to surprise any unfortunate fellow that might be lingering there!  And yes I do mean from down below ladies. 

This is a crazy ass movie that had a lot of potential.  First of all it is way over the top with all the nutty (pun not intended) alien modifications to the human beings.  This makes for a few over the top gore scenes, which manage to avoid too much CGI.  The characters are a neat mix as well, with a gay dude as the hero, a creepy minister’s kid spouting off about the Bible, a porn star who mentions on more than one occasion the numbers she has serviced, and a couple of car salesmen to name a few.  The story starts off with a blast and has a brilliantly funny ending, but the middle gets slow at times with far too much talking.  This is bad because for the most part the acting and dialogue really aren’t the strong points of this movie.  It works much better when the energy is up and things are crazy with the aliens and zombies.  There isn’t enough charisma and acting skill from the cast to keep me interested, so back-stories are really a bore.  

The special effects in Days of Darkness are a mixed bag.  We start off with a terrible CGI comet rolling thru space, but then are treated to some decent zombies that are done with practical effects.  Then you have the examinations and the alien parasites, again all practical.  But many of the kills are obviously done with CGI of varying degrees of success.  I guess the one thing that did impress me a bit about the movie is how much they tried to keep it real and on the set as opposed to CGI.  That is appreciated and surprising for a low budget independent and I appreciate it, but still cringe at the bad CGI. 

This movie really has it moments where it gets so over the top and goofy that I had fun with it.  But then it runs out of steam in the middle of the movie and gets slow, as I’ve already mentioned.  It also does away with 3 major characters in an obnoxious way that shows the sort of had no idea what to do with them after a while and needed them gone.  I mean the left the windows down on their truck during the carefully planned escape?  That is just dumb and lazy writing.  That sort of bad plot and scripting is what for me really kills what could have been a pretty nifty entry into the zombie subgenre.  In the end the movie managed to annoy me more than it entertained me, so I can’t really recommend it. 

1 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer