Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Muldoon who works behind the scenes with us here at AICN when he's not off hunting raptors on Isla Nublar. He caught a low budget ultra-Indie horror flick at Fantastic Fest and was worried it might get overlooked by the higher profile flicks, so he wrote this up for your reading pleasure.

Enjoy his take on YESTERDAY!

Yo, so here's my review. Let it be known, I have a very odd taste in movies apparently, so be warned...

YESTERDAY

Last night it was either Romero’s SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD, BRONSON, CLIVE BARKER’S DREAD or YESTERDAY, a little Canadian zombie flick that was shot for roughly 25 grand (Canadian). I’m pretty sure the first three will all be widely released or at least easy to catch further on down the line, so I figured YESTERDAY was where it’s at. I’m not going to lie, the fact that the movie is super low budget and made it into this fest in the first place is what drew me in. Zombie movies bore the piss out of me… SHAUN OF THE DEAD and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD aside, every ghoul filled movie out there is pretty much the exact same story.

First thing’s first, this movie is so not for theaters, it’s for beer drinking movie night with your buds. Sitting through the flick was like being teleported to the mid eighties. I’m pretty sure the guys shot on super 16mm, but it very much felt like one of the movies made back in the day with a VHS camcorder; no budget, but a hell of a lot of heart. That said, during the Q and A they said they shot on 16mm to give it more credibility. Why? I totally respect the idea of shooting on film, but don’t think the film vs. digital credibility contest even exists anymore, since at it’s core – it’s the story that you give a shit about.

Last year I was blown away by a low budget horror film called HELL’S GROUND, and I can gladly say, YESTERDAY is this year’s HELL’S GROUND. I loved the hell out of YESTERDAY, not because of the amazing cinematography, the great acting, or the impressive visual effects, but because the heart of the flick totally jumps out of the screen and kicks you in the face. This movie is nothing short of backyard badassness! I’ve seen some amazing movies so far at this fest, but in terms of which ones have given me an actual experience, hands down this is it.

This is the kind of movie a true horror fan can appreciate, because it’s so obvious the guys who made it are completely in love with the genre and worked with what they could to add their own little mark in the genre world. The movie just works. The acting is by no means Oscar worthy, but the film is so well crafted and the characters are well developed that it doesn’t matter. The movie is straight up fun.

The movie starts off with a random group of guys in a van driving into the woods. The rest of the film shows us everything leading up to that point and how these individuals all came together. As I mentioned above, that’s pretty formulaic in terms of a zombie movie, as most zombie movies are, but the humor is what I think helps to separate this from the pack. The intended humor is there and works, but it’s that bit of unintentional humor that just popped for me.

The film’s plot is made of following these five or six guys and eventually how they interact at the end when they reach their destination in the woods. There is a Cowboy character who stands out as the badass of the film, as a perfect shot kind of guy who never misses his target and has nothing to lose. The rest of the guys are pretty much normal everyday guys.

To spoil the thing, everyone dies, which is badass. They all of course turn zombie and that just sticks to me as awesome. I don’t remember a zombie movie where every single character turns zombie and that was pretty cool to finally get to see. This movie is able to push back at the monotonous typical zombie movie storyline and ballsilly makes its own mark in the zombie world.

If you are looking for a good time, this movie is it.

-Muldoon