Film Corner: Daylight's End

Daylight's End

Depression sucks and so do I but maybe a movie will help. This is called DAYLIGHT'S END and I assume it's going to be about vampires. My autocorrect wanted to turn that into babies, which is honestly more scary. Has anyone done a hoard of zombie toddlers. "Years after a mysterious plague has devastated the planet and turned most of humanity into blood-hungry creatures, a rogue drifter on a vengeful hunt stumbles across a band of survivors in a police station."

That sounds fine, but it won't live up to the idea of an army of toddler vampires. Think of the natural advantage they'd have!! No one would be able to hurt them just because human psychology is a real bitch about babies, and they'd be able to fit into any hiding space. Oh wow, someone actually put some thought into the premise. The car windows are all covered with fencing and the car handle is plated over for safety.

The hero is wearing MOUTH AND EYE PROTECTION so he can't become infected through splatter. You pretty much never see that, I'm happy. Something is sleeping in a chest freezer so instead of dealing with it in close spaces, he just slaps a chain around the freezer and uses his car to haul it out in the sunlight. The vampire dies. Ok, sunlight kills them. It's hard to make zombie/vampire movie opening credits feel lonely or ominous (just because everything has been done) but this one managed to do both.

I was gonna mock this character for being named Johnny Strong but that's actually the actor's name and I'm not ok now.

Me: haha what a silly name
Me: oh that's his real name im sorry
Me: he's valid

Everything feels very LAST OF US, setting wise. Humans approach what appears to be a human crying in the street, and it's a trap so OTHER humans in what appear to be prison clothes can shoot them. So now it's even more LAST OF US. The biggest threat is ourselves. Not very subtle to have the Good Guys driving around in police cars and the Bad Guys wearing orange.

They take out everything but the Woman so it's time for sexual violence. The Hero intervenes because I guess it's gonna be THAT kind of movie. I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for Bad Amazon Prime movies. Someone should make a tally of how many movies have sexual violence in them.

The heroine was previously extremely badass but now all she can do is cower while bullets whizz around. You'd think she could retrieve the gun from that nearby fresh corpse. Oh, hey this is supposed to be Dallas. The hero walks away and doesn't try to make the heroine grateful for what he did, which is about the best way to play this terrible trope. She follows and asks him for a ride back since I guess her car is trashed.

Yup, that's Dallas. That's nice. The survivors are gunning up for the incoming party (coming in hot) and sticking kids inside jail cells for safety in case the zombies get in. Huh. Nice to see people in an apocalypse movie use actual fucking tactics. The zombies all crumpled like origami kittens (no headshot rules here) but there was a last split second growl from what looked like a Smart Zombie. Johnny appears to know him, but it's unclear. The survivors scream at him for a bit (they're paranoid jerks) and Heroine changes the subject by saying she found a cargo plane. Sure, because flying somewhere else will be better than your safe spot here.

The lead survivor decrees that they'll honor the deal with Johnny BUT that for tonight he's gonna be locked up and gunless. This is eminently sensible, except they're doing it to a protagonist so this pretty much just ENSURES they'll be invaded by vampires. You should never disarm a protagonist, it just means bad guys will soon come into close combat with him and therefore even closer combat with you. It would've been better to put him on a rooftop with several guns. Then y'all might have a shot at surviving the night.

Is NOBODY gonna ask how he's managed to keep his hair so pretty in the midst of a zombie apocalypse? I wanna run my fingers through it. REALLY? It's the end of the world and a hecking supermodel shows up and NOBODY wants to offer him a free ride? You people have vastly different priorities than me.

Oh, they've noticed the smart zombie! They just don't know what to do about him beyond what they're already doing. Holy shit, I don't know how to deal with an apocalypse scenario where everyone is smart. (Except for their baffling lack of interest in Johnny's extremely nice lips, but pobody's nerfect, etc.) A lot of them are also ex cops which I Do Not Like. Johnny keeps having flashbacks of his happy wife who might've been pregnant so I'm just gonna rashly guess that the Smart Zombie is his son. We'll see.

They're trying to fly to Baja. That's the goal. My god, the heroine noticed that Johnny knew the Smart Zombie. EVERYONE IN THIS MOVIE IS TROPE AWARE. Smart Zombie killed his wife, so we're looking good on Ana's ridiculous zombie fetus theory. CAMERAS ARE DOWN, I REPEAT CAMERAS ARE DOWN. The characters are taking this seriously as a likely invasion, rather than foolishly brushing it off as the work of faulty wiring or extremely resourceful mice. I wanna revise my zombie fetus answer, unless Johnny and his wife used donation sperm from a professional footballer. This guy is BIG.

Oh wait, there's more than one in the complex. I'm not sure which one is the Smart one. We have a bitten defender who tried to hide it AND THEY NOTICED OMG OMG OMG WHEN DOES THAT EVER HAPPEN. It's morning and they're ready to drive out but the garage won't open. SOMEBODY stacked 27 cars against the garage doors. An intelligent group conversation in a zombie movie. I'm just. They can't move the cars in one day and the zombies would move them back tonight. They can't just go get MORE cars; everything out there has dead batteries and bad tires from 3 years of neglect.

Johnny feels that the best solution is to kill the Smart Zombie. They sleep in the basement of the Omni hotel in Dallas and I'm trying to Google if they even HAVE a basement. Texas buildings usually don't, but an expensive hotel might. [TW] Oh, grim, they do and an employee died down there in a flood. That's awful.

Me: just burn the building down
Movie Character: why don't you just burn the building down?
Me: !!!!!!

Oh jesus their cop dad used to tell them heart warming tales about the confederacy. I'm glad we're not supposed to like him. Johnny has a small team of volunteers ready to die. A sniper tells them how far away he can and can't cover their butts. I don't really understand the value of tippy toeing around the Omni when their guns don't have silencers. They shot a zombie then went right back to tippy toe.

NO NO NO NO WHY WOULD YOU WALK THROUGH THE ZOMBIE SLEEPING PILE RATHER THAN HUG THE WALLS. Smart Zombie killed him but honestly for that decision he deserved to die. Several of them dropped like flies. The smartest one has established that the Smart Zombie is after Johnny just as much as Johnny is after it.

OF COURSE THE GUY KILLED BY ZOMBIES WOULD WAKE UP AS A ZOMBIE ARE YOU PEOPLE NEW HERE. (I guessssss they thought the dead guy killed himself rather than be bitten? But even so. BE SURE.) [Racism] Also this means that of the two Black characters, one was the first death of the movie and the other was turned into a team-killing zombie off-screen while his white comrades received noble endings.

Sunset is coming. Heroine found a working van. Johnny is fleeing the hotel, having gotten everyone killed without killing the Smart Zombie. The real reason not to burn the hotel down, by the way, is you can't control a blaze like that. Next thing you know, the entire city goes down with you in it. Back at the survivors, someone found a....some kind of bus? It looks like a school bus painted in army green?

Johnny runs back at top yodelayheehoo with an army of zom behind him and sniper yells INCOMING. Smart Zombie appears to be wearing Kevlar, which makes him a very smart zombie indeed. Things are happening but they're mostly grenade related. Zombies go up like flash paper. You know that Charlie Sheen Rambo parody where he just starts throwing bullets instead of shooting them, but it still works? That.

Smart Zombie dies because SOMEHOW it's morning again and they're on the rooftop. That's literally impossible. And apparently he's just some guy??? Not related to the protagonist at all, just turned his wife and probably a million others??? That's boring. *slams the table* I demand more angst. Mad Max drives away, unwilling to join the others in paradise. I'm the only person I know who needs to budget 3+ hours for a 1.5 hour movie.

@chris_the_cynic. But . . . if it's just some guy, why was it following the protagonist?

He says he's been hunting and killing other "alphas" while hunting this one, so I guess he established himself as a threat? Otherwise, I got nothing.

0 comments:

Post a Comment