Two L.A. cops get caught up in a sudden zombie event. The dead are walking and they’re eating human flesh and the cops get attacked. One gets his toe mangled while the other one shoots a few of the walking dead in the head before they manage to escape. They arrive at the one cop’s house where they find his estranged wife still alive and freaked out. A few days before Christmas and the world has to hell. They hole up in the house, relatively safe as long as they don’t go outside, and fend off the occasionally zombie assault. Tensions rise in the group as the cop with the torn-off toe professes feelings for his partner’s wife, further complicating the situation. Time passes and eventually, a couple other survivors show up and inform the group about how Los Angeles has fallen and they’re not sure about the rest of the world. Zombies attack, yada, yada, yada, and soon only a few people are left alive to face an unknowable future.
Every now and again I get the urge to check out one of these super-low budget, D.I.Y. filmed on digital video flicks. Since this one fit (loosely, it turns out—Christmas is only in the background for a little bit at the beginning) my Christmas Horror theme, and it had zombies, I decided to check it out. It felt just like I thought it would, like a group of friends decided to make a movie and have some fun and so they did. For me, this was a throwback to the shot-on-video films that made the rounds in video stores back in the 80s, only now these films haunt streaming movie channels rather than wink at you with lurid covers in a store. For what it’s worth, the movie is fun and moves pretty fast. They throw in enough zombie attacks so things never get boring. Yeah, the make-up FX ranges from decent to atrocious, and the CGI gunshot splatters are, um, pretty cartoonish. But the whole movie is a big cartoon, so who really cares? My biggest complaint about the movie, and this complaint is indicative of this genre, is the tight close-up shots of the faces of the actors and the action scenes. I know they do this to hide the budget and whatnot, but it always bugs the shit out of me.
Anyhow, if you’re looking to kill a little time one afternoon, and you want some blood and some zombies and some Christmas stuff all mixed up together, you really could do worse. It’s a decent little affair and you can tell their hearts are in the right place, even if their execution leaves a bit to be desired. Oh, and Felissa Rose has a small role in the flick, which really livens things up a bit. Give Silent Night, Zombie Night a whirl, if you have the guts. It ain’t half-bad.