Germ (2013) poster

Germ (2013)

Rating:


USA. 2013.

Crew

Directors – J.T. Boone & John Craddock, Screenplay – J.T. Boone, Photography – Gus Sacks, Music – Siddharta Barnhoorn, Visual Effects Supervisor/Makeup Supervisor – Catherine Bernier, Special Effects Supervisors – Michael Barletta & Catherine Bernier. Production Company – Two Thirds Productions LLC.

Cast

Michael Flores (Max), Marguerite Mitchell (Brooke), Barnard Setaro Clark (Davidson), Mark Chiappone (Stu), Jody Pucello (Cooper), Vanessa Smith (Kim), Zoe Miller (Steph), Beth Pratt (Karen), Branden Nagle (Chad), Alyssa Coan (Krissy)


Plot

The sleepy town of Preacher’s Mill in New York State. The police deputy Max is serious about his girlfriend Brooke but she remains elusive about being tied down. Max is left in charge while the sheriff is away. A satellite has come down on the nearby mountainside and various firemen are despatched to deal with it. A local man is attacked and in investigating Max finds that his flesh has been devoured by human teeth. All around people are infected by the meteorite and start to turn into crazed zombies that attack the living.


Germ was the only film ever made by co-directors J.T. Boone and John Craddock. They and everybody in the production have never been heard from again – at most, one or two of the other actors have minor parts in films nobody has heard from.

Germ came out amid the major revival of the Zombie Film that occurred during the 2000s. Efforts like Resident Evil (2002), 28 Days Later (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004) and tv’s The Walking Dead (2010-22) created a massive revival of the genre. By 2013, the genre had started to move towards parody and gonzo title mash-ups. It may say something about how over-stuffed the genre was that Germ has a copyright date of 2010 – ie. the date the film was officially competed – but didn’t end up not being released for another three years, a point when the zombie film had started to travel in largely unserious directions.

It takes some way into Germ before it reveals that it is a zombie film. It may be that the film was seeking to avoid the zombie film label but it is awfully coy about identifying itself with the genre, talking about a “space-borne epidemic from an orbiting satellite.” (We never actually see any crashed satellite, although there are a few decent effects shots of satellites in orbit at the start). It is not until after the half-hour mark until we see our first zombie. While the trailer and poster keep referring to it as an outbreak of cannibalism.

Zombies overrun the town in Germ (2013)
Zombies overrun the town

On one side of the coin, Germ shuffles around a familiar plot. The infection created by the returned satellite goes back to at least Night of the Living Dead (1968). Aside from a little bit more focus on some of the townspeople, Craddock and Boone stay fairly much by the true and true for the rest of the film, building everything to an apocalyptic siege. On a plot level, there is nothing notable, original or distinctive about the film.

That said, you have to recognise that despite the familiarity of the material, Craddock and Boone actually do a halfway reasonable job. The zombie siege scenes are mounted with a reasonable degree of furious gore-drenched intensity. The characters are solidly established and the actors all seem to be putting in a reasonable effort to make everything work. On the whole, this emerges as a halfway reasonable effort in an overcrowded genre.


Trailer here


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