Days of Darkness (2007) - Film Review

Jake Kennedy’s 2007 indie Zombie flick DAYS OF DARKNESS caught my eye as I scanned through the Sky channels last night, after lowering my standards and scrolling through a couple more times, my standards were eventually low enough for me to think ‘well, it’s a Zombie film, and I haven’t seen it, and every now and then you find a hidden gem, so I’ll give it a whirl’. What I discovered was that DAYS OF DARKNESS is not the worst zombie film ever made, but it isn’t bad enough to be hilarious [like Zombie Lake] and it isn’t good enough to be etched on my mind forever [Romero’s Dawn of The Dead]. This film is mediocrity at its very worst.

The basic premise is that a contaminated meteor crashes to Earth and transforms the majority of humankind into flesh eating Zombies
[and when I say the majority – ooh, there was at least a dozen zombies at one point!] A kind of cross between Night of the Living Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the story here is a little different and involves Zombie embryos invading human bodies, a concept that should have been much more terrifying than it actually was!

So what we have are a few random survivors in a disused military base who are trying to survive the devastation of a Zombie invasion. The characters are a bit different from the norm, an ex porn star, her daughter, a macho actor, a car salesman, a gay guy, a religious man and an attractive ex military gal, along with a few others - oh yeah, and someone’s brother Herbert who is infected and locked in the basement. There’s the usual clash of personalities and occasionally there’s a funny line, but at the end of the in day a film that’s blatantly trying to be funny, when a muscular black guy squeezed into a borrowed pink T-shirt, with the words ‘Hugs not Drugs’ on the front is the height of the humour, then frankly, it’s a poor show!

The screenplay has its moments of glory [those odd funny lines], but generally speaking it’s weak. The acting is passable with no outstanding actors amongst the cast, and the direction is nothing better than average. The most disappointing thing for me though, are the Zombies, there is not one stand out Zombie, they all look like slow walking humans with the odd splatter of fake blood, where’s the interesting one? Where’s Tom Savini when you need him? At least there should be a biker, or a rocker, or a vicar or even a dinner lady - just one Zombie that makes you smile when you see it can pep up a film that falls flat in other areas.

So, was this averagely acted, averagely directed, low budget film, with its terrible continuity and boring Zombies actually worth watching at all? Some would argue it’s worth watching if only for the fact that the plot is a little different, but given that as soon as the plot gets interesting the film ends, and given the vast array of Zombie films available, I’d give Days of Darkness a miss.

DAYS OF DARKNESS (2007). Director/Writer: Jake Kennedy. Cast: Tom Eplin, Sabrina Gennarino, Travis Brorsen, Roshelle Pattison.

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