The Battery (2012)
★★ — The Battery (2012)
Jeremy Gardner wrote, directed, and starred in The Battery on a reported budget of just $6,000, shot largely on location in rural Connecticut with a skeleton crew and a cast of friends. For context, Romero's Night of the Living Dead cost roughly $114,000 in today's money, making Gardner's figure genuinely remarkable even by micro-budget standards. The film arrived during a particularly crowded period for zombie cinema, roughly a decade into the post-28 Days Later revival and shortly after The Walking Dead had made the genre a mainstream television staple. Gardner had no significant feature credits before this, and the film's modest festival circulation earned it a cult following online, drawing attention more for its production circumstances than its conventional genre credentials.
For the first hour, nothing happens The fact that they made this entire film on a $6k budget (considering Night of the Living Dead cost $10k in 1968) is pretty fucking outstanding. That being said, I do have to be honest with my review. I'm a huge fan of zombie films in general and The Battery is just not even "ok" for a zombie film. The major issues are Mickey is just an unbelievable character. He doesn't carry a weapon, refuses to destroy the undead, listens to music through headphones all the time and generally seems to be clueless about their situation. Also, the actor who plays Mickey is just a downright bad actor. The other issue is that because the film has such a low budget, there are long periods where nothing much happens at all. I'm talking the first hour of the film, save for maybe a few minutes here n there, you can pretty much skip. On the hour mark something interesting happens but even then, 10-15 minutes later it leads to a scene where for like 5 minutes you're just watching someone have a cigarette in a car and the proceeding moments are very predictable. Then... finally... it ends like a netflix movie. No conclusion. No clarity. Just sudden end. Overall I would say this is a below average movie. Only really watch if you're a fan of zombie cinema, but like I say huge credit to the director/writer/lead actor for getting this off the ground with a tiny budget, it just shows.
Rating: ★★ | Year: 2012 | Watched: 2025-04-20
Where to watch (UK)
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK
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