REST

REST
Directed by Cole Schreiber

CAST:
Josh Rowe
Caitlin Helms

PLOT:
     A young American soldier who died in WWI unearths himself after 90 years of being buried in the European countryside.

REVIEW:
     Some of the short films I review come from young filmmakers getting in touch with me. Yet I also actively look online for short films to review. Some of the places I check are some more of the bigger horror websites, while I also check some of the more smaller ones as well. I'm also on Facebook, which is where I heard about this short thanks to being friends with Strange Aeons Magazine. As you can tell by that name, yes it deals with the mythos and anything surrounding it. So once I saw that they had link to a short film I decided to give the short a shot.

     There really isn't much to judge acting wise in the short due to the two main characters are in fact zombies. They don't speak or even grunt. Though Chad Rowe does a decent job as the lead in this short film as the lead zombie, that's not to say that there isn't a problem in his acting. Let me explain why I say this.When we first see Rowe's zombie and for most of the short, Rowe stumble and shambles just like you would expect zombies to. Yet it's at the end of the short where all of a sudden Rowe's character starts moving like it isn't dead and start shoveling at his lost love's grave. Yep, not for brains does he salivate for, but for his lost love he lost over fifty years. The other zombie, and only other actor in the short, Caitlin Helms, only shows up for the last twenty plus seconds. Her main role is to lie on her side and embrace the hand of another zombie. For this she does as good a job as one could expect with the limited time she is giving.

     While the story is pretty straight forward with Rest a dead soldier looking to get home to his lost love, I have no problem with it. Nor do I have a problem with the look of the short or the way it was filmed. In fact, it's quite beautiful to look at. And the make-up effects for Rowe and Helm's character are quite amazing. My problem with the short is that how can a zombie just walk around and not be noticed. Rowe's zombie walks through at least two major cities, and in fact he stops by a hardware store to pick up a shovel to dig up a grave, yet no one stopped him. I should also mention that Rowe's character also booked passage on a fishing boat to carry him over the Atlantic Ocean and no one freaked out on the boat, I just have to call bull on that one. In a time where if you look at little out of place people freak out, how can someone that has no lips, dark grey skin and holes in his epidermis not call attention to itself of the unwanted variety. Not to mention how can a  zombie walking down a highway, dragging a shovel to less, while moving at a snails pace, not be target practice? Yet I understand that this is a love story, but at least one person would have smelled Rowe's zombie and gotten sick from that smell. Even though the look and feel of the short film is very professional, the suspension of common sense is to much in this one and ruins what could have been a very interesting take on the zombie genre.

BEST DEATH:
     Does a reunion of past loves count to be able to rest in piece?

BEST LINE:
     There's not one line of dialogue in the short.

FUN FACTS:
     Director Cole Schreiber worked on the special effects for Underworld: Evolution.

     Rest is viewable on Vimeo. Just click the link to view it. REST