STATE OF EMERGENCY (2010)

Studio:       Image Entertainment
Director:    Turner Clay
Writer:       Turner Clay
Producer:  Turner Clay, John Will Clay
Stars:     Jay Hayden, Tori White, Scott Lilly, Kathryn Todd Norman, McKenna Jones

Review Score: 

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Summary:

After a chemical factory explosion, four people take refuge inside a warehouse while the deadly outbreak spreads infection outside.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Four catastrophe survivors are sheltered together in an upstairs room. Ix lies unconscious on the couch while Julie panics. Jim begins to aim his rifle while Scott prepares to open the door.

4 Days Earlier – Jim and his girlfriend Emilie are on the run, but Emilie is dying. Jim stashes her body in a nearby barn and attempts to find a news broadcast on television. A chemical plant explosion has turned Montgomery County into a contaminated zone quarantined by the military. Jim finds a rifle and begins to wait out the catastrophe in the barn. Attempts to flag down passing military helicopters are unsuccessful. Jim notices scattered people simply standing still in the distance. During the night, an infected person enters the barn and tries to attack Jim before being shot.

The phone in the barn rings. On the other end is a man named Scott who heard the gunshots and saw the lights in the barn. Scott invites Jim to join him and his wife Julie and another survivor, Ix. Jim runs down the hill to the warehouse where the other three are and is given food, water, and a cot. Upstairs in the warehouse is an office that has only one entrance.

Jim has a flashback to the day of the explosion. He had just proposed to Emilie when the outbreak hit. The next day, Scott and Jim take note of the scattered infected surrounding the warehouse. Scott tells Jim how he went to a neighbor’s after the initial explosion. He found his neighbor Robert eating his wife and so took the keys to Robert’s warehouse. Ix berates Jim for eating a candy bar he found in her bag. Later, Ix befriends Jim and tells him how she never had an opportunity to make amends with her parents before the outbreak. A noise comes from one of the warehouse doors. Jim and Scott investigate. An old woman calmly asks to be allowed inside. Jim senses something is not right, even though she can speak intelligibly. He shines a flashlight and reveals her red eyes. Jim shoots her.

A news broadcast announces that the military has begun a search and rescue operation. Ix realizes she is out of candy bars. A broadcast comes over the radio. Jim realizes helicopters are on their way. Against Jim’s advice, Scott runs outside to attempt flagging down a helicopter. Scott is attacked by an infected, but Jim rescues him. Back in the warehouse, Ix collapses. The group realizes she is diabetic and has run out of insulin. Jim decides to make a risky run to a drugstore. Scott and Julie instead talk him into finding a nearby airdrop that they previously saw coming from a passing plane. Scott provides cover fire while Jim retrieves insulin from the airdrop. He also fends off an infected attack before returning to the warehouse. Unbeknownst to Jim, opening the airdrop activated a military beacon.

Back in the warehouse, Jim notices an open sewer grate just as an infected jumps on Scott. After a struggle, the four survivors make it up to the office and arrive at the moment depicted in the opening scene. Scott allows the door to open and Jim shoots the attacking infected. Jim then spends the night camped out with his rifle at the top of the staircase. The next day, Jim investigates noises at the front door. He is greeted by the pointed guns of soldiers. Jim is taken to a facility, debriefed, and released. He then reunites with the other three survivors.

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Review:

Midway through “State of Emergency,” I was reasonably certain my review would skew negative.  The pacing was slow.  Some of the budgetary seams showed.  Initial spots of acting seemed unsure.  Certain elements felt underdone while others felt overdone.  (There is a reused music sting that ramps up with the expectation of an epic atom bomb explosion when really it is just a door opening.)  However, I still felt drawn into the events onscreen.  The movie seemed boring, yet I was not bored.  What I came to realize was that expectations regarding what this movie actually is were erroneously set by some misleading Marketing artwork and promotional blurbs.

I would be curious to learn how director Turner Clay would classify his own movie, but I suspect that the decision to feature the word “zombie” and depict screaming creatures grabbing with scarred arms is primarily a promotional ruse.  As of this writing, zombies are still a hot commodity and any distributor would be a fool not to maximize sales by categorizing “State of Emergency” in that genre.  This may be a bit of a spoiler, but take notice that one is liable to see more zombies on the DVD/Blu-ray box cover than in the actual film.

More suitable single words are not readily used to accurately pinpoint this movie’s genre.  Perhaps a more apt categorization would be an apocalypse film.  But for lack of a better descriptor, it is ostensibly a zombie film so I may as well refer to it as such.  Like the best zombie films though, the focus is not on the monsters, but on how human beings react to rapidly altering societal conditions.  In fact, just to be clear, allow me to restate once more: anyone out for pure zombie carnage will be met with disappointment.  This is intentionally not that brand of movie.

In many zombie films, the fight for survival is portrayed as a never-ending battle, both against creatures and against fellow survivors.  Life is so wholly consumed with constant gunfire, running, and crippling depression over the whole dismal situation that it is a wonder anyone would choose to survive at all.  “State of Emergency” depicts the apocalypse more akin to how I imagine it would actually play in reality: a lot of waiting around holed up inside a nondescript shelter occupying each day with excruciating boredom.  I for one appreciated this realistic depiction of outbreak survival.

The first half hour of the film follows a lone survivor named Jim.  After confronting his first infected, Jim receives a phone call.  The man on the other end claims that he saw Jim’s lights and heard gunshots.  After Jim reveals he is alone, he receives an invitation to join the survivors at a warehouse down the hill.  They have food and water and claim, “you are more than welcome to join us.”  Having read over 100 issues of “The Walking Dead” and having seen ten times that number in similarly themed films, my imagination immediately went through all the scenarios of how Jim was going to be screwed.  If zombie fiction has taught anything, it is that just about any survivor will cut his own mother’s throat to gain the slightest advantage, and no one is ever to be trusted.  Guess what?  The man on the other end of the phone was not lying.  When Jim makes it to the warehouse, he is greeted with food, water, and a cot, and nothing is asked of him in return.  (Plus, if Jim is a baseball fan, the man welcoming him to the warehouse looks just like a young Mike Piazza.)  This may be the first time I have ever seen apocalypse survivors without ulterior motives or immediate suspicions of every single person encountered.

So how does one pass time while facing the apocalypse without a need to scavenge supplies or to constantly fend off attackers as if inside a real-life game of “Left 4 Dead?”  By waiting.  And thinking.  And wondering.  It may not make for constantly exciting entertainment, and this is where “State of Emergency” will lose those who demand nonstop action at the end of the world, but it is quietly engaging.

It certainly helps that news broadcasts explain that the infection is limited to just one county.  The survivors here have more reason to hope.  It is still a bleak portrayal of suffering loss and coping with radically adjusted lives, but it is not as desperate or manic as the widespread desolation of a Romero film.  Even with a total zombie population that can be counted on two hands, the menace still feels present.  Thrill mongers need not apply.  “State of Emergency” is for those seeking a thoughtful approach on how to survive the apocalypse.

Review Score:  70

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