Descendents [DVD] [2008] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

5 stars to balance the 1 on the other review. This is NOT a hollywood film. It is Chilean and its ambience is dictated by the civil strife that has occured in that country historically. It tends to be a film of images and the story is from the children's point of view. The zombie virus strikes but it turns out that some children are naturally immune (they have 3 wounds on their neck). The army that is called in to stop the zombies kills everyone infected or immune they dont care.
The film has a dreamlike quality as the children flee the army to find refuge with other immune children. The army finds them and wipes them out except for the three that escape headed for the beach that their mother mentioned in the beginning of the film (this was a placebo as the mother had no hope that the children would survive). Bombs drop as the children flee and they are killed. The ending on the beach is a kind of dream sequence that occurs as the children die. I thought it was a very different and interesting take on the zombie apocalypse. You gotta have brains though, food for thought.

It's easy to rate this a two or one star affair. Lets be honest most very low budget horror movies are one or two star at most compared to most other flicks. But if you love horror movies and low budget ones shouldn't they have their own rating system? It's only fair. So on a VERY low budget this one does some impressive work. The lead actress is a little girl and she's quite good and should have a future in film. Hopefully without getting involved in dope etc later on. She carries the flick as she wanders around , the cgi is very impressive in this flick. It's amazing what can be done these days even with a very small budget. The cities look very realistic and ruined. The helicopters look real too at least until the end shot. The film however did grate on me with it's constant flash back to the little girl and her mother escaping a research station. Frankly it's better just to do ONE flashback. Few films can get away with one than one flashback of the same past event. It's distracting and it doesn't work. the story is limited but engaging as the little girl and other kids try to stay alive. In this one , the infected don't hunt them it's soldiers who do. The ending is well strange and surreal and sorta blows the whole movie but until then it was ok. This is really a two star flick on a normal scale but this tried to be different and it's ok. The infected utilize very limited makeup because they aren't zombies really because they are still alive. SO if you enjoy a VERY low budget horror film that is a little different then you might enjoy this. Or you may not, if you are not a fan of low budget horror then this aint for you. This was shot in chile and they speak english in this movie because english is the worlds language, the film though doesn't take place in chile , it's taking place in a unnamed place. There is a documentary extra which shows how even with little money you can make digital images appear filmlike in postproduction. when even this low of budget can do that , then you can see why film will start vanishing probably.

This is an original idea, very badly done

This could have been a great movie, given some slight plot changes and if it had been filmed by someone with `style' (or maybe less style). I'm not going to say it was amateurish because the filming itself isn't bad it's the subject matter.

It's your standard zombie apocalypse, presumably this occurred long enough ago that humans are adapting (giving birth to immune kids who are now 8 - 12 years old), but to me it all felt very `mid-apocalypse' like you're talking weeks not decades.

The film is from the point of view of a female child 9 years of age who runs away from a centre where she's being barbarically tested on because she has marks on her neck showing she's immune. This I also found unbelievable (the running away part), you've had say 15 years to perfect your `containment, testing, eradication' system... so how come the zombies are escaping, the kid's escaping... it's falling apart at the seams, how the hell did they last 15 years?

It is awash with flashbacks which explain the storyline/history while the kid walks... but to be honest I found it hard to care beyond, uh, the first 30 seconds of the movie.

Also filming in minimal colour while leaving the blood `red' does not make a film scary, just makes the blood look fake.

The ending, wow that is so one of the things that needs to be changed! It is by far the lamest, lousiest, dumbest, stupidest... I think you get the idea, the ending sucks big hairy mule b***s. Whoever wrote this ending was quite obviously having a great laugh at the movie goers paying good money to see this film (thank god I watched it free on Love Film!)

What I liked about the movie...
The concept... a future where apocalypse born children are evolving to fit the new order.

The immune also being of no interest to the undead, the undead don't even seem to notice them but when adults come along the zombies go wild.

The Zombie Movie
As a genre you have certain expectations of your `average' zombie flick and you get good ones (Resident Evils, The Romero movies, Dead Air), you get your classics which are good but you don't really know why (Zombie Flesh Eaters, Zombie Holocaust) and your funny, which is sometimes intentional and sometimes not (Shaun, Zombieland, Dance of the Dead, Flight of the Living dead) and your appalling pieces of junk (we shall not name) but they all have a core story a formula if you will... Zombie apocalypse, Group of unlikely survivors who get whittled down to one or two survivors by the end of the film, THE END

As my cousin Suzy would say, this film is just wrong.

I would like to see this concept reworked, written and filmed by people with some common sense, someone who'd make it more believable, it may be a movie about Zombies but it doesn't mean it can bend the rules of time and space (if they wanted to do that they should have made SciFi)