Review by Ben Bussey
Regular BAH readers may have seen a recent review of mine descend into a frothing-at-the-mouth rant about the most frustratingly common mistakes made by no-budget indie horror movies. After that, there was nothing I needed more than some firm reassurance that, now and then, indie horror can still do precisely the opposite; rather than re-tread a painfully overfamiliar trail, it can find new, hitherto unexplored routes on the treacherous map of horror conventions, and come up with something that’s genuinely surprising.
To whit – Stalled. We’re a little late to the party here as this microbudget Brit horror comedy has been out there for over a month already, but what the hell. I hadn’t heard much about it until recently, and given how my finger is so firmly on the pulse (cough, ahem, etc.), it seems fair to assume that not all readers will be aware of it either.
But first, a little preamble.
About eight years ago I saw another no-budget British horror comedy called Freak Out. Imagine the young Kevin Smith making a slasher movie and you’re not too far off the mark. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the film, but it sort of pained me to feel that way, as it was clearly the work of young, ambitious people with genuine passion, knowledge and appreciation for horror… not to put too fine a point on it, but people who didn’t seem that different from me. I haven’t revisited Freak Out since, but as memory serves it revelled in its own absurdity a little too much, trying to make something on a fairly large scale when clearly the resources were not there for the filmmakers to do so.
In case you’re wondering why I bring this up, it’s because the same core team behind Freak Out, director Christian James and writer/actor Dan Palmer, have reunited on Stalled, and they’ve quite clearly learned some lessons along the way. This time, they’ve stuck a little closer to conventional indie horror wisdom and restricted the action to a single night and single location (and, for the large part, single performer) – but fear not, this most certainly isn’t kids in a cabin version 5,318,008. This is something we genuinely haven’t experienced before. This is the zombie apocalypse – as seen from a toilet cubicle.
Palmer stars as – who else – WC, a handyman in an office building, working during the staff party on Christmas Eve. Venturing into the girls’ bogs (or, if you prefer, ‘ladies’ room’) to do a spot of routine maintenance, he darts to hide in a stall as a couple of fetching, heavily intoxicated office workers in very casual attire venture stagger in, and proceed to engage in a spot of lipstick lesbianism (tick the box marked ‘something interesting in the first 25 minutes’…) However, a little face-sucking suddenly gives way to a little face-biting, and WC realises to his horror that a zombie virus has broken out in the building. Given his location, at least he doesn’t have to worry about soiling himself; but getting out alive is a dicier prospect…
It’s an inspired premise in so many ways. Yes, of course we’re all getting a bit shit sick of the same old zombie apocalypse movies, so the only way forward is to find a different approach – and this is clearly what Stalled is gearing toward. In some respects it’s not too far removed from last year’s divisive festival hit The Battery, another claustrophobic low budget production which kept its focus squarely on a pair of mismatched survivors with the zombies largely left in the background (see Keri’s review). Many found The Battery a bit too quiet, slow and uneventful – and, as such, Stalled may be a welcome alternative, as it’s a surprisingly loud and high-energy affair. At points I was reminded of the old Ryan Reynolds in a coffin movie Buried (although, all apologies Mr Palmer, you’re not quite that dishy), inasmuch as – while the action, in this instance, is not 100% confined to a single small space – the director does find a remarkable number of ways to keep that single space visually interesting. We even have a number of action scenes of sorts occuring within that tight little box (stop sniggering at the back), with all manner of seemingly throwaway items put to unexpected good use… I’ll give nothing away, but there are more than a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments.
Still, this is not to say I didn’t have any hang-ups with Stalled whatsoever. It did come close to losing me when, maybe a third of the way in – up to which point, most of the action had played out like a silent comedy – a second character is introduced in the form of an unseen woman (Antonia Bernath) in another cubicle. Perhaps this was an inevitability, as it was always going to struggle to keep things interesting with a single guy in a single location for a full-length movie – hell, even Evil Dead 2 cut away fairly regularly to events outside. Alas, the relationship with the mystery woman rather sours Stalled for me, as it results in an abundance of over-written, Breakfast Club-esque deep and meaningful life lesson conversations, replete with yet another Manic Pixie Dreamgirl figure. To be fair, though, things do progress in a slightly different way than I had anticipated, and attempts to up the ante for genuine emotional content are by no means in vain.
Even at 80 minutes, Stalled does feel just a little overlong; beyond the John Hughesy duologues, we definitely have a few scenes which could have done with some judicious snipping (there was no need to run the full credits at the beginning and at the end, for instance, and the post-credits stinger is a bit of a let-down). But I don’t want to nit-pick. I’m not seeking perfection when I sit down to check out an indie horror: I’m seeking something fresh and gripping, a break from the norm with at least flashes of ingenuity, and above all something which you can tell right away was put together with love. Stalled ticks all those boxes, no problem – so I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to all horror fans, not to mention all fledgling no-budget filmmakers who want some hints as to how it should be done.
Stalled is available now on Region 2 DVD from Matchbox Films.