INTERLOPERS (2024)
★½ — INTERLOPERS (2024)
The zombie film is, by any measure, one of the most crowded corners of horror cinema. From the grainy social commentary of George Romero's early work to the glossy, fast-cut blockbusters of the 2000s and beyond, audiences have seen the living dead repurposed as metaphor for consumerism, political collapse, pandemic anxiety and just about everything else. Finding a genuinely fresh angle is no small task, which is part of what makes micro-budget independent entries into the genre worth paying attention to, even when the odds are stacked against them. Demolition Man (1993) and other lower-cost horror productions have shown that ambition and formal invention can compensate for limited resources, though that equation does not always hold.
Interlopers (2024) is a British production from Trashmachine Pictures, directed by Dan Gould, and it arrives with a structural conceit that already sets it apart from the average entry in its genre. The film is divided into three distinct sections, framed as Before, During and After a zombie apocalypse, treating what it calls a "biological revolution" as a kind of hinge point in human history rather than simply a backdrop for survival horror. Running at 106 minutes, it is a full-length feature despite its micro-budget origins, and its tagline, "The Future Is Coming", gestures at something more considered and speculative than straight genre fare. The ensemble cast includes Ward J. Harries, Ewan Henderson, Ross Thompson, Scarlett Barnfather and Bethany Gregson, none of whom are widely known quantities at this stage of their careers, which is par for the course in independent British filmmaking of this kind. Those interested in how British independent cinema has been faring in the 2020s might also want to look at Tiger Stripes, another 2020s film reviewed here, which takes a similarly genre-adjacent approach to bigger thematic concerns.
Gould, working within tight financial constraints, has clearly thought carefully about how to structure the material, and the three-part format suggests a filmmaker who understands that story architecture can do work that production values cannot always cover. The film's marketing, including its trailer, appears to have generated a reasonable level of anticipation, positioning it as something a little more ambitious than a standard low-budget horror outing. Whether the finished film delivers on that promise is, of course, the question. For context on what science fiction cinema has looked like at the bigger-budget end of the spectrum in recent years, my review of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga offers a useful point of contrast, and on the horror side, Castle Freak is another recent genre piece I have written about that grappled with its own production limitations.
Super low budget. And it shows... Don't get me wrong. What they achieved on such a low budget is "fine" considering that but when I'm comparing this fairly to all other zombie movies I just don't think it stack up. The story and the graphic design are by far the best bits. There are barely any zombies in this and the guy who plays the Wesker style baddie is laughably bad. Overall, from the great trailer and the great intro, it loses steam fast.
I do find myself coming back to that structural ambition, though, because it is clearly where the real creative energy went. The three-part framing and the graphic design work suggest someone with a genuine vision, and in a different production context those elements might have carried something really memorable. As it stands, the gap between the promise of the opening and what follows is the film's real problem: it sets a bar for itself and then, bit by bit, lets it slip. For my money, a zombie film that commits to being lean and strange will always beat one that plays it safe with a polished but unremarkable centre, and Interlopers unfortunately lands somewhere in between those two options. A decent idea, not quite the film it wanted to be.
Rating: ★½ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2025-06-15
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for INTERLOPERS (2024) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon US
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