I watch a lot of crap here at Brundlereview, most of the stuff that comes my way is the lowest of the low, DYI filmmaking at it's worst. I have to sit through crap like Mill Creek's TOMB OR TERRORS and DECREPIT CRYPT OF NIGHTMARES 50 movie packs in a week, so when Sonny Fernandezs' "Highway 91" came into my mail, I wasn't expecting much.
Now, I've heard of this Sonny guy before, but I never bothered to check his stuff out. I'm kicking myself for that now.
Yeah, that's right, I said it. Now don't get me wrong, not everyone is going to feel the way I do. If you can't get past the budget and acting (the f/x are actually quite good) then you just won't be able to enjoy this. But for me, this is "The Evil Dead" of our generation. I really do think it's THAT GOOD. He takes his budget, which I'm guessing was next to nothing and he crafts a goddamn amazing movie out of it, hitting emotional beats most movies try for but never succeed.
The plot of the movie seems simple enough, a group of characters, starting out as three, but picking up more along the way, travel through a world that has been taken over by the undead and are simply trying to survive.
Cody Tergesen plays Brian, who opts for a bow and arrow to kill the zombies, extremely hot Liz Dockter plays Chloe, who mostly uses nives, and the director himself, Sonny Fernandez, plays Virgil, who uses a big, sledgehammer type weapon. When the movie starts, it's just these three, making their way across this apocalyptic world. Sonny sets up quickly that they each depend on each other for survival, when one of them gets in trouble, the other is there to back them up and pull them out of a jam. They have their rules that have helped them along the way and they stick by them, don't think "Zombieland" though. This movie doesn't copy or steal from any other film that came before it, isn't that something? An original zombie movie!
Eventually, our trio begins to pick up other survivors, Andre (played with a goofy likability by Aaron Swenson) and Sky (another hottie played by Kim Haarman), a boyfriend/girlfriend couple who have their own rules of survival as well as plucky Kiera (played by Jessica Helland) a girl who has been acting as a slave to a group of scavengers.
The characters are truly something special, and Sonny writes them like you wouldn't believe. He constantly surprised me with the directions that they took. Andre starts off as a braggart and at first, you think he's just a goofy guy who talks a lot of shit, when it's time to kill some zombies though, he proves himself a force to be reckoned with, Brian was a total asshole when the movie started, I hated his character, but I'll be goddamn if about halfway through the movie I loved the guy, and the best thing is, I didn't even know when it happened. It's not one moment where he says, "Ok, I'm not an asshole anymore." There isn't one defining...incident, Sonny is smarter than that, it's subtle and it happens through pure character development.The best thing is, just when the plot settles in and you think you have the movie figured out, it throws you a curveball. The first one comes in the form of Eric (played with a creepy menace by Topher Williams, who also did some music, looks like everyone multi-tasked in this thing) what he does is heinous disgusting scary and unthinkable. It leaves you careening and wondering how the movie went from one extreme to the next, and Sonny keeps it coming. Just when you've got the film figured out, he does something else that completely gets you back interested. By the time the crazy cult leader Vecchio (a completely manic and amazing Justin Kavlie) a man who says by the grace of God he can stop someone who gets bit from turning into a zombie, I was having a blast.
He mixes in humor (wait until you see the cast when they accidentally ingest mushrooms, I was rolling on the floor) with grim terror...and does it effortlessly.
By the time the end credits rolled I realized that Sonny had made a movie that, despite all the zombie killing (and the zombie deaths are through the roof) and despite the gore (guts, brains, you name it) he made a movie that relies on nothing but story and character to get it through. I realized that conversations I thought were just throwaway talks were truly what mattered most in the film and by the end, these characters are not who they were when the movie first started. They changed...and THAT'S what the movie is about. Surviving, when you think you can't, facing hell and death of the people you care about, and having to go on.
Now let me bring down the hype a little bit. I promise not everyone is going to love the movie as much as I did. As much as I dug the people in the movie, I'd be the first to admit the acting isn't that great, some of the cast does a stellar job, others not so much, also those who want nothing but high definition fancy shamancy fucking pictures aren't going to dig this either. This is grainy and dirty stuff. It also runs a little long, but after taking time out to think about what he should've edited out...I really couldn't think of anything, but for the A.D.D crowd, this isn't for them.
But for those of us who are tired of the same old crap, the same old been there done that cliche ridden movie bull, where you know exactly what's going to happen, this is truly something special. I have no idea why more people aren't talking about this guy. He's done something amazing here and I'm going to buy the rest of his movie right now, if the trailers are any indication, he's an underground figure that needs to blow up now.Highway 91 is going to be available soon, available exclusively from Amazon.com, I suggest you check there every day until it's for sale, and buy this badboy as soon as you can!
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