Things are mostly back to normal at work now that Hurricane Ian is no longer beating up the state of Florida. It's weird to think just days ago we were in wall-to-wall coverage and I was sleeping on my air mattress at the station. It's nice that things are a little less crazy and I can slow down and watch a movie or two... like today's one...
The Night Eats The World (2018)
The 344th review
It's not on purpose that I did back to back movies where a single character has to do 95% of the lifting. We start off Sam who is at a party desperately wanting to make a quick exit. The party is at his ex-girlfriend's apartment building and he's only there to pick up tapes that she accidentally packed when she moved away. He's over the whole thing and just wants to leave but she keeps disappearing. After some unpleasantness she tells him where they are and in the process of retrieving them, he falls asleep after he locks the door. A move that saved his life.
He wakes up to a world that's been taken over by the dead. He leaves the room to see the apartment abandoned with broken furniture and blood on the walls. He even comes across his ex who immediately tries attacking him. From there the movie follows Sam as he tries to survive the zombie apocalypse. He's alone in an apartment in Paris with no one to talk to. The movie then follows him around as he explores the apartment building, gathers supplies and tries to live his life with what he can scrounge up.
It's another slow mover and it's really depressing. Sam is alone with only zombies to keep him company. He's trapped in a very large cage that toys with him. There are times where the street will be empty and you think he can maybe make a break for it, but the movie always reminds you that a single sound can send a horde his way. Sam does his best to keep his mind occupied but, like I said, there's no one to talk to, well sort of. There's a zombie trapped in an elevator named Alfred that he has one-sided conversations with. It's really sad watching him talk to Alfred because he's desperate for companionship and all he has is a mute monster that wants to eat him. Sam eventually blows up and starts yelling at Alfred and even throws some alcohol in his face. Later Sam calms down and goes to Alfred and apologizes! It sounds silly to type, but to see it play out, I felt sorry for Alfred and was glad he apologized!
That's what I liked about Sam, his humanity. Zombie fiction is full of the subtext "Man is the real monster!!!!1!!111!!one!!11" which is tiresome, but Sam is a decent guy. There's a dead (real dead, not zombie dead) couple in an apartment below him. Eventually they start to stink and Sam goes to throw the body of the woman out the window and leave her to the zombies. But right before, he has a change of heart. Instead he wraps both the woman and her husband in a sealable sleeping bag, sets them on their bed, puts a picture of them in between and then puts some jewelry on the woman's bag. It's incredibly touching and really makes you feel for the character. It's little touches like that that really esteem you to Sam. He never loses his humanity no matter how messed up the world gets.
But, he's not perfect. He makes a lot of mistakes and he pays pretty heavily for each one. He's not equipped to deal with this, no matter how hard he tries. While it has some nice scenes and some cool moments where he's making music, it's a zombie movie and things aren't happy. There's a moment when you are legitimately happy for the guy that maybe he has a lifeline, but it gets taken away from him with a real gut punch scene. It just makes you feel for the guy and you don't have much time to process it because shortly after, shit hits the fan and we jump to our finale.
I liked it and I'm liking it more as I'm writing this review. I liked Sam a lot because he's not what you see that often in zombie movies. He's a decent guy, thrown in an impossible situation, he's clever and handy, but prone to mistakes. Sam feels like a real person, every emotion he shows, it's earned, even when he's losing it. Much like the rest of the movie, the ending is pretty bleak but does give you a spark of hope.
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