Belgium. 2019.
Crew
Director – Guy Bleyaert, Photography – Fabian De Backer, Special Effects – Nick Van Dijke, Makeup Effects – Johanna Cool, Laura De Corte & Tim de Cubber. Production Company – Macromovie Filmworks/Actionworlds Film.
Cast
Guy Bleyaert (Tex), Zara Pythian (Eve), Lee Charles (Brad), Kimberly Stahl (Deena), Daniel Pala (Daniel), Davide D’urbano (Rene), Stefanie Joosten (Snow), John Flanders (Robert), Silvio Simac (Commander), Lucas Tavernier (Joe), Themo Melikidze (Mr Mandrake), Sebastien Decuyper (Sarge), Patrick Miceli (Resistance Leader), Maria Malikidze (Jen), Kevin Van Doorslaer (Jen’s Father)
Plot
It is seven years after a zombie apocalypse has overrun the world. France, Belgium and the Netherlands are cut off from the rest of Europe. A unit of soldiers receive an assignment to pick up Jen, a sixteen year-old girl who appears to have an immunity, and deliver her to her father in England. This entails them travelling across France through dangerous territory that is overrun by zombies and armed resistance groups.
This was the second film for Belgian actor/director Guy Bleyaert. Aside from acting roles elsewhere, Bleyaert has also directed the non-genre The Last Inquisitors (2013) in which he plays an action movie priest.
Transit 17 is another Zombie Film, one among the vast number that have overrun the genre since the mid-2000s. It is no more, no less than any of several hundred others in the field. We have had variants on the plot here of a group of armed soldiers making their way through a zombie-infested zone frequently in order to escort a child or someone who bears a possible immunity or else to retrieve a vital package – see other works like Zomblies (2010), Battle of the Damned (2013), Quarantine LA (2013), The Girl With All the Gifts (2016), Pandemic (2016), Redcon-1 (2018), Peninsula (2020) and Army of the Dead (2021).
Transit 17 is not a particularly good variant on any of these. For some reason, Guy Bleyaert is fascinated with the military side of things. Thus almost all of the film consists of tough guy soldiers and rebels, some with muscles bulging like sacks of walnuts, going into manoeuvres, furiously muttering operational jargonese, while tech support try to hack their way through technical difficulties. In fact, there is so much focus on the military side of things, along with assorted fight scenes and shoot-ups, that the zombies only occasionally appear throughout.
All of this is conducted on a low-budget, meaning that the film ends up being a fairly tedious variant on stuff that has been conducted far better elsewhere. Frequently the low-budget gets in the way of effective action scenes – the car chases end up being fairly anaemic. And nothing says low-budget more than the use of digital explosions in lieu of the real thing.
Trailer here