I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

LOW BUDGET, A COUPLE OF NEW IDEAS, A LOT OF OLD ONES AND NO ENDING... ICK




Germ aka GermZ aka Germ Z (2013)

So Fangoria has more than a few low budget horror flicks on the table, so I decided to take a chance with this one. The plot is simple - not. We've got a complicated beginning about a rocket launching to knock out a satellite but something beats them to it and the thing crashes in the mountains of a backwoods town... and one bright firefighter (don't worry, EVERYBODY who should have known much better were depicted as real morons in this movie) picks up a particularly sticky icky piece of the debris with his BARE HANDS and off we go.

Now if you've seen the Andromeduh Strain I'm truly sorry and here are a couple of aspirin. Maybe you should have a cup of coffee to wake back up. No? 'Kay. So with a whopping $500k to make this turkey let's see what they did with it.

We've got our two main characters (though they shouldn't be), young Deputy Max and his 'Let's just be friends' girlfriend Brooke and... everybody else. In other words, you don't get too much time to feel for anybody at all - for low budget (probably knowing they didn't have much to offer) they kept everything going pretty fast. A little too fast. The camera work was terrible - shots seemed to bob worse than those horrid hand-held camera movies. But they did try some different things (along with the typical iconic images, like the zombies pulling intestines like taffy that every zombie movie must have).


The quick explanation of this strain of mutant zombies was that the goop from outer space attaches itself to the stupid human's hypothalamus, causing it to grow at an exponential rate. Now pay attention, this is your science lesson for today. The hypothalamus, located in the brain, is the size of an almond and controls body temperature, hunger, important aspects of parenting and attachment behaviors, thirst, fatigue, sleep, and circadian cycles. 

Sooo, I guess becoming a zombie in this movie means you sit around drinking lots of beer and ignoring your kids. Hmmm? Oh all right - apparently these zombies forget who they are and get really hungry. The tag line (and I'm embarrassed to type it) is 'cannibalism is contagious'. Woof.


It spreads quickly - they show a little bit of a military presence and hazmat too along with the handful of fireman but budget-wise they didn't have a lot so I think they used some over and over. I know they probably must have with the townspeople - here's an isolated town with MILES between houses but when the zombie thing hits all of a sudden it's like they're in the middle of a city.

So what was the original part? Well, apparently, the growth of the hypothalamus doesn't stop so theses zombies have a brief shelf life. The little almond sized doohickey just keeps growing until, with a lot of screaming (oh yeah, these zombies made a ton of noise) they grab their heads as they pop like zits. What, you can watch intestines being pulled like taffy but you say yuck to zits? You're twisted. I like you.

So although I would call this a swing and a miss as far as good movies go (nice attempt to grab some of the World War Z fame dummies) it wasn't the WORST zombie movie I've seen, not by a long shot. The ending? There really isn't one. Unless you want to see this turned into a TV series so they can continue. No? Didn't think so.

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