Rating: 5/10

Director: Soham Mehta
Writers: Soham Mehta, Marcel Rodriguez
Cast: Jamie Teer, Amit A. Patel, Arzan Gonda, Brian Vega

In a bleak, washed-out world resembling the one we currently inhabit, a young girl runs through the streets looking for safety. Bloody and bruised, she happens upon a reinforced house guarded by a man with a gun. He is not pleased to see her, but hustles her inside anyway and Soham Mehta’s short film SURVIVORS is under way. While the short film features solid directing and really good acting, there are just too many disparate things going on in the film for it to totally work for me.

We learn that people have mutated or become infected with something that makes them go crazy. In other words, they’re all zombies. But rather than show these legions of freaky people, they’re talked about and that’s just an odd choice when we all know everyone loves zombies and wants to see them grub on brains. After learning via some tense talking that both characters have lost their significant others to this infection, the film takes on a kind of forced romantic bend that frankly was a little weird and unnecessary in a movie that’s a mere 13 minutes long.

Aside from my issues with SURVIVORS, there is a cool reveal in the film that I didn’t really see coming and the third act, while feeling much too truncated and disconnected from the buildup, was still a unique idea. Plus I should add, we do get a small dose of zombie goodness by the time the credits roll. I just felt like there was 2-3 different movies going on here and Mehta failed to drawn the connection for me. While certainly not terrible, SURVIVORS has some good moments, but overall felt a little forced and disjointed.