"There are only three good American zombie movies," video store owner Chuck (Chuck Hartsell) says at the beginning of Hide and Creep, "and they were all directed by George Romero." (He apparently isn't a big fan of Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead) The question on the viewer's mind is, would this movie end up on that list?

The film's creators, co-director/actor Hartsell, and co-director writer Chance Shirley, are certainly making an honest attempt. They share with Romero card-carrying status of industry outsiders (the film was made in Thorsby, Alabama with local actors and crew), knowledge and affection for what has come before, and a skill set that allows them (for the most part) to transcend their low budget.

The film begins when a zombie appears in the video store run by Chuck, who knocks the zombie out with a blow to the head. Taking it to the local police station (all the cops are out of town) he meets Barbara (played by Melissa Bush, whose character name is undoubtedly an homage to dear ol' Unca George). Meanwhile, Mike (Michael Shelton) has ended up in a tree with no pants, apparently the victim of an alien abduction. The members of the local gun club, investigating some electrical problems, end up under attack by zombies, and Reverend Smith (Barry Austin) is attacked by a zombie in his church.

More comedy than horror, the film doesn't generate much in the way of suspense, because the characters aren't really developed much. The screenplay is full of would-be Tarantino/Kevin Smith-type riffs (such as the video store scene at the beginning, and a discussion of why Popeye's is not the superior fried chicken restaurant), most of which end up falling flat and don't really deepen the characters, so we're not as invested in what happens to them.

Take, for instance, the character of Keith, played by Kyle Holman. Rather than take his young daughters with him when he reaches his home (and he is by now aware that something bad is going down), he leaves them alone in the house to fend for themselves while he goes out to investigate in town. While this sets up a couple of mildly amusing gags later in the film, it also raises the eyebrows of the viewer, leaving us to wonder why we should care about or follow this dim bulb when he seems kind of blase about the safety of his kids. A mark that hangs over his character for most of the film's remainder.

Contrast this with the tension set up in the recent film Shaun of the Dead (review here), in which Shaun risks his life to save his loved ones during the zombie infestation. The fact that he's thinking about his family and friends during the crisis makes us identify with him more, and because we care, the horror elements work during that film's genuinely suspenseful second half.

Here, the characters are more or less comedy-sketch types that generate little interest. While some of the gags centered around Nascar and the second amendment do serve (somewhat) to flesh out the characters' milieu, and the gag of a government worker who carries pamphlets on how to deal with a zombie infestation is genuinely subversive and dead-on (this is one thing in the film that is worthy of Romero himself), most of the jokes seem to be made at the characters' expense. If you're a fan of the jokey, self-referential tone that has made its way into American horror films since the success of Scream, this kind of thing just may amuse you.

And the gore is disappointing, as well. There are a couple of good, bloody gags (such as when one character gets his skull bitten into by a zombie in the back of a pickup truck or a really good head shot in Reverend Smith's church), but this is the area where the low budget betrays itself. The cinematography makes good use of color, the sound is clear as a bell, the editing is fluid, but the gore is just sad (at some points you can actually see the blood is just being squirted onto the zombies after they've been shot).

And so, lacking any real horror and suspense, skimping on the gore, and providing us with very little in the way of effective characterization, the film just doesn't deliver the goods. There are a few laughs along the way, but ultimately the film is like a sketch from Jeff Foxworthy's tv show that has been expanded into feature length. Alas, Hide and Creep would probably not make it onto Chuck's list of good American zombie movies.

Hide And Creep Online