In The Veil, the Lazarus 57 virus is released in a small English coastal village when a bit of espionage goes bad. An SAS team is sent in to measure the effects of the damage and to locate survivors. Three soldiers are forced to hole up in a house to defend themselves against the townsfolk that have turned into rabid, flesh-craving zombies.
This is an extremely ambitious no-budget production that has a few drawbacks that expose the inexperience of the filmmakers, but some very effective moments. There are times when the well edited action sequences and suspense keep you on the edge of your seat, but they are separated by long periods of dialog that’s difficult to hear, poorly designated flashbacks and superfluous footage that could have easily been edited to be much shorter.
One of the drawbacks of the film is that the 3 main characters wear gas masks throughout a majority of the movie, making it difficult to tell who’s who and sometimes what they are saying. the movie is shot in black and white except for brief periods at the beginning and end. At the beginning after it’s black and white, when you meet the 3 characters, two of them are seemingly exactly dressed in black tactical dress with vests and gas masks, the third wearing camouflage tactical gear. From the end I could see that one was actually dressed in navy blue pants, while the other wore a more olive drab vest and all black gear. Upon my second viewing of the movie, it was easier to distinguish the two apart, but still had trouble during close-ups, action or just darker scenes where the slight difference in colors were not apparent. I thought that at some point this confusion might be part of the storyline, but it was not. The thought problem would only be exacerbated when even more SAS were introduced in the story, but they keep it pretty simple. The sound through the gas masks was less trouble than I thought it would be, but still a bit of a problem. I had more trouble with their English accents, which is purely a life-long personal problem due to poor hearing.
The camera work in The Veil was quite good. They didn’t fall into the trap that other low budget movies that I’ve seen have, where they set the camera in the corner and just “act”. They kept the shots interesting using different and original angles, yet didn’t over-do it. While some of the scenes could have benefited from a little brevity, the action scenes were well edited and the dialog scenes flowed well. One scene, lit only by flashes of lightning and gunfire, was extremely inventive and well done.
The zombie make-up, while very effective, was very inconsistent. Some of the zombies wore only a bit of blood, while some looked like a plate of spaghetti was thrown at their face, while still some had a healthy amount of stage make-up and blood. It made for effective storytelling, but sometimes made me kind of chuckle. The special effects were very inventive and were produced by a good co-operation between the cameraman and the actors. While there was no secret to how they were done, they were very effective and stood up surprisingly well to my scrutiny.
I have to give props to the creators of this film because they touched on the points that make for good zombie films like Night Of The Living Dead and 28 Days Later, which is the fact that it’s not always the zombies who you have to look out for. There’s an inner turmoil in the group, the seeds of mistrust are well planted and come across very well via the actors and the writing.
I was given the opportunity by the Director to view a higher quality screener, sent from England. The picture was clear, the audio was distinguished and it made for an enjoyable viewing. I also viewed a copy of the film that I bought from the site of Brain Damage Films. It has a much lower quality picture, rife with pixelation and the last third of the movie is somehow stretched sideways, distorting the picture. The audio is much more of a jumble on this version as well. These drawbacks are some of the complaints that I’ve read about in other reviews before buying it and obviously can’t be pegged on the creators of the film.
I have to say that The Veil is an enjoyable film that takes a bit of patience, but is very surprising considering it’s inexperienced creators and complete lack of budget. True zombie movie fans are bound to enjoy this flick like I did.
Comments(1)
