R2 DVD Review: The Horde
The Horde (2009)
Distributor (UK): Momentum
Directed by: Yannick Dahan, Benjamin Rocher
Starring: Claude Perron, Eriq Ebouaney, Doudou Masta, Jean-Pierre Martins
Review by: Ben Bussey
As a dark night approaches, a small team of police officers sneak into a condemned high rise block of flats in a dead end part of town. Given that the cops are armed, in plain clothes, and wearing balaclavas, it’s apparent they’re not there on strictly official police business. This is personal, the order of the day being vengeance against the gangsters who killed their colleague. Alas, the gangsters are more than ready for them. But just when things look to be at their bleakest for the cops, things take a turn for the worst for all and sundry; as it seems this is the very night that the zombie apocalypse happens. Timing is everything, as the saying goes. Pretty soon cop and gangster alike realise their best chance of survival is if they work together.
So, if you were to say this all sounds rather like Assault on Precinct 13 by way of Dawn of the Dead ’04, with a hint of Demons 2 thanks to the residential setting, then… you’d be right. And, to a large extent, you’d have said pretty much all there is to say about The Horde.
Perhaps that’s unfair. It’s not as if The Horde is necessarily any less inventive than, say, Mutants, or Zombie Transfusion, or the Zombie Diaries, or Primal, or Resident Evil 1 through 4, or the Day of the Dead remake, or the Return of the Living Dead DTV sequels, or… you get the point. There have been a lot of films along these lines. A LOT. And I’m just mentioning those from recent years. Did every last one of those aforementioned films stink to high heaven? Not at all. But they stand testament to the fact that the zombie genre is really damn crowded. In fact, stick every last zombie movie together in one room, and they probably would resemble an endless oncoming mass of ravenous living dead. Pardon me while I take a moment to appreciate this mental image of my creation. Hmm.
It’s not that there is anything about The Horde that’s bad, as such. It’s every bit as well-made a film as any horror to come out of France this past decade; great cinematography, decent editing and FX, and strong performances. Doudou Masta is particularly impressive as the volatile loose cannon of the crew, and Claude Perron and Eriq Ebouaney make for muscular leading men (figuratively and literally) as head cop and gangster respectively, their uneasy alliance and underlying morality highly reminscent of Precinct 13′s Austin Strode and Darwin Joston.
But there, you see – I mentioned Precinct 13 again. It’s nigh-on impossible not to. As well executed as it all may be, there’s simply no avoiding an overwhelming sense of been-there done-that about The Horde. And that feeling remains, no matter how many large scale attack scenes and impressively gruesome deaths they squeeze in; and there are a few, notably a nice moment when Ebouaney takes out a zombie entirely by hand, and the bit you may have seen in the trailer when Perron faces off swathes of the living dead single handed. Not even playing the “guess who dies in what order” game helps, even though there are a few subverted expectations in there.
I suppose there’s always the slim possibilty The Horde may feel fresh and unique to one who hasn’t seen any other modern zombie movies, but I’m going to hedge my bets that doesn’t apply to anyone reading this. Still, innovation is not essential to entertainment, and The Horde will no doubt prove proficient enough to please many zombie fans; but to my mind it’s simply too generic, too lacking in identity to warrant a recommendation.
