T
he Horde, aka La Horde, is a 2009 French zombie action thriller that was released just before the zombie fad took up. The Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher co-directed feature is a very basic one and, thankfully, and easy watch. In the film, a couple of cops go to a ghetto block (apartment complex) where they seek to kill a couple of gangsters who killed one of their brothers. Things don’t go according to plan and the cops are one upped by the thugs. Soon though, explosions are heard outside and one of the people that were shot in the apartment has turned into a zombie. Now the cops and gangsters, no matter how much they hate each other, must team up if they want to escape the apartment complex and live to see another day during the zombie apocalypse.
Essentially, The Horde plays out like a reverse version of The Raid: Redemption or Dredd, as instead of having to fight their way up the building against deadly opponents, they have to fight their way down against the ruthless undead. Oh, did I mention that these aren’t your average zombies, these are the ones that will sprint after you and are really strong, the worst kind of zombies you can imagine, and there are a lot of them (hence horde).
Honestly, this is the best recipe for a balls to the wall zombie film that I’ve seen to date. Rather than having regular people as the focus of the film, you have gangsters and cops, tough people who aren’t afraid of pulling the trigger so you rarely have that moment where people are crying in a corner afraid to protect themselves and instead have a group of people who are willing to light up anybody that comes at them, and boy do they do that. That being said, they aren’t the most intelligent group of people and it takes them a really, really, really long time, if ever, to figure out that they only way to kill these zombies is by shooting them in the head.
It may be ridiculously fun but there are certainly issues to be had with the film. The actors’ performances aren’t all that great and the dialogue could definitely sue an improvement. There are a bunch of subplots that cause dissent amongst the group but I find it so hard that when put in a situation that requires understanding and teamwork, these people just can’t get it together no matter how much they hate each other, they are cops and criminals after all. I do have to give props to whoever played the old, racist and comical war monger that joined up with the group in the third act, he was awesome.
Like many of the films I’ve reviewed for this year’s 31 Days of Horror segment, The Horde is another fun, but flawed, piece of foreign horror that’s great for fun late night viewing. In fact, of all the horror film’s I’ve watched thus far, this would be the on I’d love to see an English remake of, especially if we could get guys like Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson and Rutger Hauer in some of the key roles. If you haven’t seen it yet and are still trying to get your fill of zombies and want to see them get mowed down by a machine gun then add it to your list on Netflix.
Rating: A flawed, all-out and over-the-top zombie action spectacle (6/10)
Recent Comments