New Life

John Rosman's New Life tries to breathe exactly that into the zombie genre, and only somewhat succeeds. This is a film with some good atmosphere, scenery and genuinely disturbing special effects but it's consistently unclear in narrative, distracted by its own weird subplots and never quite grounds itself in anything wholly cohesive. A young girl (Hayley Erin) is on the run from the director (Tony Amendola) of a nefarious institute who has hired a mysterious fixer (Sonia Walger) to track her down and eliminate her. Why? Well I've already mentioned zombies earlier which isn't a secret the film really keeps too well from the outset, so there you go. The film is at its strongest when it focuses on the young girl evading her pursuers, seeking food and shelter from a kindly farmer and his wife, the simplicity of moving from place to place. When the story pivots back to the fixer is when it sort of loses momentum; Walger is a great actress whose work I love in LOST, but she's saddled with an odd arc here. Too much dialogue and a bizarre subplot about her early onset ALS do nothing for the story at large and just muddy things up. It also suffers from a jarringly abrupt ending and a general lack of focus.