A man with partial blindness and a young pregnant police officer must work together to escape from a deadly virus that has spread across Grey County.
“Deadsight” is a low-budget zombie flick that starts in the middle of nowhere, and ends in the middle of nowhere, physically and figuratively. There is practically no plot, no character development, and occasionally, a small handful of zombies do appear to remind us that we are watching a post-apocalyptic zombie movie, just in case the absence of some much-needed story exposition allowed us to forget that. I get it, as an indie filmmaker myself for over 30 years, money for independent filmmaking is not always easily accessible but the one aspect of any film, big-budget or small, the one element that will lift your feature above a lack of special effects or gore, is a good story. Unfortunately, “Deadsight” has none of the above.
When Ben (Adam Seybold) awakens inside an ambulance in the middle of nowhere to the sound of silence, and realizes that he is almost blind, he must navigate his way through the treacherous roads that lie ahead of him. He is attacked several times by zombies but manages to escape. Hearing wind chimes in the distance, he follows their sound to an old abandoned house atop a hill. Making his way inside, he kills a lone zombie and tries to settle down for the cold night which fast approaches. At the same time, Officer Mara Madigan (Liv Collins), who is pregnant, is starting her day out in her patrol car. Unable to reach anybody on her radio, she encounters a woman on the side of the road who is very sick. She tries to offer assistance but the woman pulls a gun on her. Before she can shoot, Mara fires at the woman, striking her in the knee but it has no effect on her. The woman then takes her car and speeds off.
Eventually, Mara and Ben meet at the old house and being the only two humans, they try to watch out for each other but when the building is surrounded by hordes of zombies, they decide to make their way through the woods at the back of the house. They come across a large, seemingly empty factory where they hole up for a while. As Mara begins to have contractions, Ben hears a swarm of zombies outside in the hallway and knowing she and her unborn child will have no chance of survival, he guides her out to safety, giving his life to save her and her baby’s. Mara wanders out into the wilderness and leaves Ben and the factory behind her.
“Deadsight” offers absolutely nothing new to the zombie genre and while the acting from its two leads, Ben and Mara, played by Adam Seybold and Liv Collins is fine, unfortunately, it is the only thing the film has going for it. We watch both characters, at first individually, as they try to spearhead their way through a world they are not accustomed to yet, and then collectively, as they fight, and kill, to survive. They go from an old house to a creepy factory and then Ben gives his life so that Mara can give birth at any second, by herself, in the middle of nowhere. There are literally no character arcs, no progression, no exposition, they go from Point A to Point B and then the movie ends. If the story had at least tried to give each person some depth, a little weightiness to otherwise one-dimensional characters, the film might have been somewhat elevated but instead, director Jesse Thomas Cook sticks with conventionality and leaves us with a handful of onscreen zombie deaths that have been better executed (pun intended) in far-superior movies.
Available on DVD, Digital and On Demand July 2nd
