Zombie enthusiasts who take exception to the sprinting undead should note a couple of points. Firstly, running zombies have been around since 1985 with Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead so cut the Dawn of the Dead remake some slack and secondly, they should probably avoid Chris Conlee's directorial debut, Evilution. The zombies in this do parkour. Not only do they run but they jump, somersault and flip like that guy from the start of Casino Royale. That is if the guy from the start of Casino Royale was a crazed cannibalistic animated corpse with blood and black ichor haemorraghing from his nose and mouth. Which, sadly, he wasn't.

Anybody who takes their fictional horror monsters with a little more levity and sense of fun could certainly do a lot worse than checking out this low-budget little necro-fest.

For the sake of accuracy however it should be pointed out that Evilution's zombies are not quite what they appear to be. The plot concerns a microscopic alien lifeform which when introduced into a human system turns the victim into a blood-crazed zombie drone of the alien intelligence. When the sole survivor of a military experiment gone spectacularly wrong steals this serum and begins experimenting with it in a slumish apartment building it is only a matter of time before things get out of hand and the undead are prowling the halls and either infecting or eating all the other residents.

Though the source of the zombie outbreak is a nice twist on the genre it is not explored to it's full potential and the undead antagonists are really no different to any of the other zombies we see so much of these days.

This really highlights the key flaw with Evilution, it just doesn't offer anything new. It is a fun but ultimately generic romp through all of the usual beats and conventions of zombie cinema. This is not to say that it is a bad film. Its low budget is used excellently and it is shot and directed well with occasional flashes of something much greater. The film was entirely shot on inexpensive Panasonic HVX-200 cameras but looks great thanks to Matthew Rudenberg's cinematography with even the low-light scenes working well - unusual in such a modest production. The gore is plentiful and also looks great though there are probably not enough real bloody and painful set-pieces to satiate the true gore-hounds out there. The zombie make-up (by Alex Noble) is similarly effective with the addition of an odious black bile leaking from the ghoul's mouths and noses being a particularly nasty highlight.

The performances are a little varied and shakey in places but at least some of the blame for this would have to be put on the under-developed script which forces plot points a little too strenuously onto its characters. The central romance between the lead (Peter-Kaiser) and his hot neighbour (Ramirez) is the worst offender for this, being so contrived and unlikely as to be utterly unbelievable and pull you out of the story.

That said, Nathan Bexton's turn as the very peculiar hotel manager makes up for all these problems with his wonderfully odd and genuinely creepy performance. It's a shame that we don't see more of him as he lights up the screen whenever he appears. His dark back-story and motivations are only vaguely hinted at but it would be great to see him in a (hopefully more inventive) spin off from this movie.

Evilution is a horror fan's horror movie (this is director, Chris Conlee's first stint at helming but he has a credit list as long as your arm in editing horror movies, including Ryan Schifrin's hugely enjoyable Abominable) and it has a real sense of good-natured energy about it. There is plenty to enjoy but due to its derivative to the point of obsession nature it can only be truly recommended to devout zombie-followers.

Rating: 6/10

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