Ravers (2018) - Zombies vs American accents

Apart from the fact that I recognised one of the actors in 'Ravers' as an Englishman I'd recently seen in another movie, I had a sneaking suspicion that one or two of the cast weren't natural born Americans.  In fact, I think most were born and bred in jolly ol' England and were doing their best impression of Yosemite Sam for ninety minutes - all the while being chased by zombie-like creatures.

Naturally, it's hard for your average British actor (and, trust me, the cast here is VERY average!) to pretend to be scared to death while fighting for their lives while putting on a convincing New York accent.  I freely admit I couldn't do it.  But nor can they.  In fact, I'd love to know the reason they didn't just set the film in Britain and be done with it.  It's constantly hinted that it's set in the States, but I have no idea why.

A journalist with a phobia of germs goes to an illegal rave to get a scoop and gets more than she bargained with when a dodgy energy drink makes half the venue turn into zombies.  Now she and a handful of others have to fight to get out (the exits are all locked - for some reason).  A pretty standard plot to a zombie B-movie, but the problem comes with the monsters themselves.  The script even points out that they're - technically - not zombies.  And they're definitely not.  These creatures can be spooked, shouted down and generally tricked into not eating or attacking people.  And - best still for our human protagonists - they can even be made to attack each other - a very handy plot-point whenever the writers needed the humans to get away safely.

As much as it has its flaws, I didn't hate the film.  It was decent enough, but there wasn't much here that I haven't seen before - and better.  I didn't really care about many of the characters and the fact they were all trying to do accents made them even harder to relate to.  If you really need another zombie fix then there's enough here for you to enjoy.  It had some nice make-up effects here and there (the burnt skinless zombie at the end was well done!), but if you're looking for a colourful mock zombie flick where people are stuck in a building, try 'Demons' from way back in 1985.  Oh, and don't get your hopes up that Natasha Henstridge is in it much.  She has about three minutes of screen time, tops.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back