#275 -- The Revenant (2009)

Director: D. Kerry Prior
Rating: 4 / 5

This is another one that I found On Demand. Most of the time, the movies I watch on here aren't very great, so I didn't have any real expectations for it. Fortunately, this is one of the few that's actually really good. I assumed it was about some sort of zombie apocalypse, which it kind of is...but it's different.

It's about a guy named Bart who was in the military and died in combat. Shortly after his funeral, when all of his loved ones were good and devastated over his death, he returned to life. He went to stay with his best friend, Joey, who helped him figure out just what he had become. At first glance, you'd think that he was a zombie, naturally. His bullet holes were still there, you could see his autopsy scar, and he was obviously decaying. But he never ate anyone, he drank blood instead, and everyone called him a vampire. Joey looked up some information somewhere, and then started calling him a Revenant. I had no clue what this was, and since he seemed kind of like a mix between zombie and vampire, I just thought that these people didn't know what they were talking about. But I looked up the definition, and found out that a Revenant is a walking corpse that returns from the grave to torment people; the legends come from the middle ages, and have a lot of similarities with vampires. So it turns out, they actually did know what they were talking about.

Bart never really tormented anyone, though. He just wanted to figure out what was going on, and why he puked blood every time he tried to eat something. He learned eventually that he had to drink blood in order to stop the decaying process. Once he got hungry, he'd start decaying again, and puking up blood. Once he got his fill of blood, though, he could eat and get drunk with his friend just like the next guy. He started by stealing some blood from the hospital, but that wasn't as easy as he'd thought. He and Joey ended up at a gas station one night, and some Mexican thug tried to rob him. They ended up killing him, so Bart just fed on him. They kept returning to gas stations, hoping for a robbery; they came upon attempted rapes and murders, and they just took all those guys out. They were sort of like zombie/vampire superheroes. They were ridding their town of crime (and apparently, there was A LOT of crime where they lived). On the news, they were known as the vigilante gunslingers and, even though they were doing something good for the community, they were wanted by the police.

The bad-ass vampire crime fighters!

Joey got shot during one of their adventures, and Bart had to transform him into a Revenant. This made their little duo even more powerful, and even more wanted by the coppers. They also had a friend who didn't think they should be alive, and she ratted them out to the police. In the end, there were some betrayals within their friendship, and they parted ways. It involved a group of guys that they'd failed to kill 100% (they didn't chop their heads off after feeding, so they returned as Revenants themselves) who were very angry about being left in the river to be eaten by fish.

I liked almost everything about this movie. The undead guys looked pretty cool, with their white-out eyes and their decaying flesh and what-not. There was definitely some comedy involved, a bit of a love story, and a few sad moments. There was one scene in particular that made the entire movie for me, and I think you'll agree once you watch it. Joey ended up having his head chopped off by the gang of angry Revenants I mentioned earlier. They mailed his head to Bart, but Joey wasn't dead. See, you've got to chop off the head before they come back to life. So Joey was just a living head. I guess his vocal chords had been severed, though, so he couldn't talk all that well. Bart thought about the smokers who have to talk with those little robot thingies, so he held a vibrator to Joey's throat in order for them to communicate. This is, hands down, one of the funniest things I have ever seen in a zombie movie. It was my favorite part and, even if I had hated everything else, that would have made me like it. But I did't hate anything, so it just made a wonderful movie even better.

They got a kick out of freaking people the fuck out. 

The acting was pretty good, and it starred David Anders (from Heroes) as Bart. Joey was played by Chris Wylde, who plays in a lot of kids TV shows. I really enjoyed both of them, and they interacted very well together. The rest of the cast were just supporting characters, and never really meant much. But that's okay, because Bart and Joey were so great that they really didn't even need a supporting cast. My advice to you is to watch this movie as soon as you can. If you're a fan of zombies, vampires, or just funny movies with some blood, you'll definitely enjoy it.

Rating

Cinematography - 8 points. I don't know what kind of budget they were working with here, but I assume it was pretty good. Either that, or they were just some talented people. It looked good, but I wasn't amazed by it like I am with some movies.

Storyline - 10 points. They took the government/zombie thing in a new direction, though I'm not sure that was even the point. It started in the military, and it ended in a government facility designed to create soldiers out of the Revenants. It's really not all that different, but it was done really well and I thought it was great.

Gore - 6 points. Surprisingly, there really wasn't all that much gore. Bart and Joey used guns to kill the people they fed on, which was the only downfall of the movie. I hate guns in horror movies, because they are so damn boring. When they fed, it just looked like they were sucking on peoples' heads, so that didn't offer any real gore. The effects were good, and their zombie/vampire forms definitely looked good and creepy, though, so I'll give it that.

Characters - 9 points. Bart and Joey were absolutely fantastic. I cannot stress this enough. Their interactions with one another will make you really believe in their friendship. They love each other, they're there for each other, and they fight like cats and dogs and betray each other. But in the end, they're still friends who would do absolutely anything for the other person. I really loved their relationship, and their funny little quips and arguments. But the other characters were really just there for filler, it seemed. Some were annoying, others were just boring.

Scariness - 10 points. It actually wasn't scary at all, but I wouldn't feel right giving it zero points in this category, because it wasn't meant to be scary. I'm substituting that for something else here: funny-ness. It was definitely funny, and that makes up for it not being scary.

Overall score - 43 / 50