The Shortround: Wade (Review)

Hot off the presses from the jaded viewer inbox of awesomness is a little short entitled Wade. Thanks to director Haynze Whitmore who sent me a screener of the film. After watching the trailers (you can see them all below) I was expecting a zombie exploitation flick. It's a little of both and you can see bits of Ash in the titular character.

Here be the plot.

WADE is a short film about a war hero that has to adapt to a small town after serving years in the armed forces. He takes a job as a bug exterminator and often feels the urge to go head to head combat with the bugs using army artillery. Disaster strikes when a chemical company does illegal spilling of a bizarre toxic waste and begins turning people into the living dead. Wade has to go back to his roots as a solder and save this small town from damnation.

the jaded viewer says: Whitmore filmed this short in Cheboygan, Michigan on what indie film directors call "a shoe string budget". Unfortunately it shows. The grindhouse, staticky feel got my gore adrenaline pumped early on but when we're introduced to Wade, it's hard to like our anti-hero asshole. He's got a scratchy voice, a severe smoking addiction and hates on everyone. As opposed to Ash, who uses humor and sarcasm, Wade comes off a little difficult to like. But I guess that's his charm. Raspy voice, wifebeater and muscle car. That's Wade in a nutshell.

Wade's day as a bug exterminator has him smoke bombing a lady's house, yelling at his GF, drinking the booze and investigating zombie slaughter. The good stuff finally comes in buckets and drum full of top notch gore and splatter. Zombies attack, zombies eat flesh and zombies get capped via headshots. In the shadow of darkness, Whitmore pulls off some good effects that Raimi would applaud. The movie is very surreal as well, combining some over the top performances from the cast with a hoola hooping girl trio music number.

Overall, Whitmore does his best to compact Wade's story into a short of a would be feature film. I am amazed by the drive indie filmmakers have when making their ideas come to life. You have to applaud the effort by Haynze Whitmore and his crew for making dare I say a first...an exploitation/zombie film. It's a first effort that can only get better on the more than likely sequel.










Wade was screened at the Madison Horror Festival and had two nominations and one win at the Terror Film Festival in Philly. Head over to the MySpace site for more information.

Categories: the shortround, wade