The Shortround: Home

It's another edition of The Shortround. Up this week a zombie rom com from Australia courtesy of Cameron McCulloch called Home. I wouldn't exactly call it a ha ha rom com more like a sad rom zom. Here be the basic plot.

Tells the story of a lone surviving woman, stuck in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the undead, trying to hold on to the last of her humanity.

the jaded viewer says: This 11 minute short is without any dialogue. Starring an unnamed woman who lives deep in the woods, we see her life consists of repelling zombie attacks and a nostalgic longing of the man she's lost. It's a pure vignette of zombie lore, probably a lost story in the great zombie uprising. As she checks the perimeter, it seems the zombies are getting closer on her home and all hope seems to be lost.

With one final night approaching, she pretties up her face, puts on a wedding gown and makes her now wedding night memorable with her man...her dead husband. It's quite an end to an interesting short.

Home is clearly an exercise in the zombie genre for Cameron McCulloch. We've all seen every zombie story variation so really nothing new is that shocking or surprising. It's an interesting concept in Home by taking hopelessness and amplifying it to the max. The silence is clearly sad as it is creepy. What really is there to say when your surrounded by the undead who are rapidly closing in? What do you do in your final moments when you actually have time to prepare?

I like how the short closed, I just didn't like anything else. At times it resembles a fan made film complete with friends and families playing zombie. With such a minimal budget, there is not much in gore or splatter and with any zombie movie, this is pretty much the money shot.

Home is an interesting take within the zombie subgenre of rom zom. I've seen better (Alice Jacobs is Dead comes to mind) and I've seen worse. When somebody can tell a zombie story I've never seen before, I'll make sure you all know. Until then I'm going home (pun intended!).