‘Nobody’s gonna flip the switch back on…’
I thought I’d seen every type of zombie film imaginable from George A. Romero’s shuffling army of the undead, to the sprinting, infected lunatics of the 28 Days Later franchise to more challenging, esoteric fare like One Cut of the Dead and Pontypool. But no. I haven’t seen it all. The Battery, a micro-budget zombie two hander from 2012, offers a genuinely fresh take on the subgenre that refuses to die…
Ben (Jeremy Gardner – who also serves as writer and director) and his former baseball team mate Mickey (Adam Cronheim), are brought together by a zombie apocalypse. Despite having little in common (besides baseball), the two men rely on each other for survival. While Ben seems to thrive in this new cutthroat world, Mickey, the more sensitive of the two, becomes more and more forlorn. Hope arrives, however, in the shape of Annie (Alana O’Brien), another survivor from a nearby compound who communicates with Mickey via radio.
Despite being semi improvised and shot on the most shoestring of budgets, The Battery has more ingenuity and innovation than many other much bigger budget films in this area and this is a testament to Gardner’s understanding of what makes a successful zombie film. The best zombie films are not about zombies. This film is about how people react to a tragedy. It’s a film about companionship. It’s a film about human interaction, the precarious nature of ‘polite’ society and… well… baseball. Because this film is just as much about the little things that make life worth living as it is more complex ideas. It should also be noted that the soundtrack is excellent. You know it’s a good one when you have to keep referring to Shazam as the film is playing.
The Battery is an inventive and original take on a tired genre. Gardner, a filmmaker I will be keeping an eye on in the future, takes some big swings (one long sequence in the film’s third act will be particularly divisive, as will the zombie masturbation scene – I’ll leave the content of that scene, dear reader, to your sick imagination), and they nearly all pay off. I was entertained. I was disgusted. I was pleasantly disguised – an underrated gem.
