Halloween Scene: The Vanguard (2008)

I had no idea what The Vanguard was when I decided to turn it on on NetBox. I just saw a thumbnail of the poster here and thought "Sure, the dude's holding bloody hatchets, I'm in." For whatever reason I thought it would be something along the lines of Outlander (aka Aliens vs. Vikings). It turns out that it's actually a zombie movie. Great right? Well...

Not so much. And it's not even really the movie's fault. I will say that it's fairly slow, introduces people early on that don't show up until much further into the movie and has random flashbacks of a Vanishing Point nature. The two things that made me stop paying attention to this movie are that 1. it seems like the filmmakers got a fairly good amount of money from a rich uncle and wanted to make a movie with tons of scenes of the star looking like a zombie killing badass and 2. it is WAY too similar to a zombie comic idea I've been kicking around in my head for a long time. It was weird. Like they got a look into my notebooks (I'm dusting them for fingerprints as I type).

To the first point, I have to say that I might have done the exact same thing given money and the time to make my own zombie movie. In fact I have the time now, so maybe I'll start working on some homegrown zombie special effects. Anyway, there are just too many scenes like the one in the trailer where he's running and then stops in the middle of the field and waits for the zombies to sneak up on him FROM BEHIND so he can hatchet the shit out of them. It doesn't make sense unless you're just trying to say "I'm a badass."

To the second point, it was just kind of frustrating because there were a lot of basic elements that the movie and my idea that no one has ever seen. So it's already out there, would anyone want my comic? Ah well, can't get too caught up in that. So, if anyone wants a comic that's like Vanguard but way more awesome, drop me a line and I'll pitch you on it.

So, with those two things in mind, I had to step away for a while (read: the middle) and came back for the very end which brought back some of those characters from the beginning and I didn't get it (obviously that's on me). With that in mind, I guess this isn't the best review, but if you can handle a lot of posturing and some impressive zombie effects and a look at a zombie apocalypse years after it actually happened and not right after, then you should check this out. Heck, it's only 89 minutes and you can check it out on NetBox, so you won't be out time or money if you check it out. And, since you probably (hopefully) don't have notebooks full of similar material, you'll probably dig it.

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