What Comes Next: The Battery

You can read my review of this movie here, and you can read about the “What Comes Next” series here.

As always, there will be spoilers.  So if you haven’t seen this movie, you’ll need so before reading this article.  And I highly recommend that you watch this.

Before I get into the meat of this post, I want to explore Ben’s escape from the car at the end of the film.  Ben tells us (well, he really tells Annie – the woman who lives in the zombie-free colony – over the walkie talkie) how he is going to escape the car by finally telling the story of how he and Mickey escaped from the house they had been trapped in:

“We just opened the door.  They tried to pile in one side, and we just went out the other.”

It’s a novel idea, but I’m not entirely sure how well it would work.  When surrounding an object, zombies don’t really respond like lemmings.  Well, perhaps they do, but not fast-acting lemmings.  Very slow lemmings.  So, while I could possibly buy that this could work with a house (lots of room to maneuver and all that), I can’t see it working with a station wagon.  We see him opening the rear hatch (hatch?  I feel like it’s called a hatch), and the next scene is him on the road, running (more like hobbling, really) from the zombies.  With the car completely surrounded by zombies, I just don’t think there would’ve been a door vacated by zombies before the entire car was filled and Ben was bitten. 

(Not to mention the fact that a crowd of zombies groaning in one spot for a couple days was sure to attract the attention of more zombies.  By the time Ben tried his escape, there should have been hundreds of zombies, not dozens.)

Still, that’s how the movie ends, so that’s our starting point.

The last image we see of Ben is him hobbling from the zombies he just narrowly escaped.  It doesn’t look good.  He’s sleep deprived, malnourished (due to living on a diet of canned tuna and urine) and can’t move very quickly due to the gunshot wound in his leg.  With an undead horde about 10 feet behind him, it’s quite possible that his story ends a few minutes after the credits roll.  He can’t keep up his already plodding pace - inspiring Rock Plaza Central song be damned – and the zombies devour him on the road.

But there’s also a chance he gets away.  If there’s one thing we know about Ben, it’s that he’s a ruthless bastard.  Plus, these were his last words to Annie in that walkie talkie conversation:

“If it [escaping the car] doesn’t work this time, I’m just gonna put a bullet in my head.  But if it does, I’m gonna come and put one in yours.  I’ll see ya soon.”

He seemed to be having fun with the zombie apocalypse until he had to put a round in his best friend’s head.  After that, his mind unraveled faster than the baseball in his hand.  His voice got rough.  His eyes were empty.  He had two things on his mind: survival and revenge.  He was already on his way to survival (in his mind, escaping the car would be the hardest part of the plan, and he seemed to have pulled that off pretty well), which means his mind was already working on revenge.

He knows that the colony couldn’t be far.  They were in walkie talkie range.  So, while finding it would be difficult, it certainly wouldn’t be impossible.

The bigger question is what happens once he gets there?  We don’t know how big the colony is, but I’m going to assume – based on no evidence whatsoever – that there are somewhere between 20-50 people there. We know they’re careful.  We know they have guns.  And, since Ben threatened Annie over the walkie talkie, they’ll be on the lookout for trouble (even if they don’t think he’ll actually find them, they’ll still be on alert for a couple weeks). 

We also know that Ben is a good shot, and more than willing to kill someone if his own survival is at stake.  He shot a guy from around 20 yards, then had no qualms at walking up and shooting him in the head (because Ben knows that the line between life and death can be as thin as a double-tap).  But he’s also smart.  He won’t run at the colony guns blazing.  He’ll formulate a plan.  Separate and terminate.  Like a fatter, bearded version of Jim from 28 Days Later.

Even though I’d like to say that he would be able to pull it off, I just don’t think he’d be able to do it.  He may be able to take out a few of them, but not everyone in the colony.  Not if they’re prepared for him.  I imagine it’s walled off, and they would have guards.  Jim had been on the inside.  Knew the ins and outs.  Ben has no idea what he’s getting himself into.  Eventually, he would go down in a blaze of glory.  Maybe he is able to take Annie out as he’s being plugged, Sonny Corleone style. 

A crazed, bearded ex-ballplayer storming a walled-off community in search of revenge.  I would absolutely watch that movie.

Of course, he could also just lay in wait until Annie sets foot outside the colony and take his revenge at that point.  That would probably be a better option.  Less dramatic, but it would get the job done. 

Good luck on your murderous endeavors, Ben.

(If you have any ideas for a movie to cover in this series, leave it in the comments.)

The Battery

Description from IMDB:

The personalities of two former baseball players clash as they traverse the rural back roads of a post-plague New England teeming with the undead.

My thoughts:

More than anything, this movie really made me think about the differences in personality and how they would mesh in a zombie-infested world.  Ben – a realist – is clearly unhinged, but he seems to be adapting quite well.  He even appears to be enjoying himself.

Mickey – an optimist – seems defeated by it all.  I felt that it was only a matter of time before Mickey died, most likely as the result of just giving up.

I could identify more with Ben, but I doubt I would ever do a lot of things he does.

These differences in the characters also manifested itself with Annie.  They happen to hear Annie over their walkie-talkies.  She lives in some kind of zombie-free community with a group of others (named “The Orchard”).  It’s a concept that’s not unfamiliar to anyone who has seen many zombie movies.  But we never actually see it here.  We hear Annie say things like, “It’s not what you think it is.”  I really loved the idea of throwing a familiar zombie trope like that in here but never actually showing it. 

It’s Ben & Mickey’s responses to that information that tell us about their characters.  After Annie tells them to leave it alone, Mickey is still obsessed.  He can’t stop thinking about it.  It’s a haven for him.  A place to sleep without having to worry about being attacked.  Somewhere he can stop running.  However, Ben just stops thinking about it.  He’s happy with his life.  He doesn’t need a safe zone.  He’s fine right where he is.

Seriously though, Ben is probably a psychopath. I don’t like that I identify with him.

I didn’t really like either of the two characters.  But maybe that was the point.  After all, they didn’t really seem to like each other, either (unless they’re drunk, which I may need to try).  When Mickey is trying to convince Annie to let him join their community, he gives up Ben without much thought.  “We were ballplayers.  He was a starting catcher.  I was out in the bullpen.  We never hung out in the same circles.  I hardly even know him.” 

Tale as old as time…

I suppose that’s what the real zombie apocalypse would be like.  We wouldn’t necessarily be traveling with our loved ones.  In a perfect world we would, but a zombie apocalypse doesn’t happen in a perfect world.  In the event of a real zombie apocalypse, we would be stuck with whoever we happened to be with at the time of the outbreak, and, eventually, whoever survived from that group.  That means you have a better chance of trying to survive with your annoying coworker rather than your loved ones.  The good news is that it would be easier to kill one of your co-survivors once they become infected.  The bad news is that you may want to off yourself before it gets to that point.

I’m torn as to whether I really liked this movie or not.  There were parts I really liked, but there were also a ton of extremely slow moments.  For instance, we watch them brush their teeth for a full minute.  While I understand that it’s a big deal for them (they probably haven’t brushed their teeth in a long time), I didn’t necessarily feel the need to watch the entire teeth-brushing process. 

That’s a problem that’s indicative of the entire movie.  It tends to linger on shots for too long.  And most of them are boring, run-of-the-mill shots in the first place.  Looking out the window while driving.  Sitting around in chairs.  There’s really not much going on throughout a lot of this movie, yet the camera lingers too long on most of it.  I’m not begging for action, but I tend to get tired of watching scene after scene where nothing happens, yet having the camera linger on each of the scenes.

While I understand this is most likely what it would be like to live in a zombie apocalypse (a little bit of action, but not a ton going on the majority of the time), that doesn’t mean I want to watch it.  When the apocalypse comes, I’ll deal with the minutiae of my own life.  I don’t necessarily need to live through someone else’s.

I also have some major problems with the end, but I don’t really want to get into spoilers here.  If I do end up getting into that, I’ll do it in a future post.  I’ve been wanting to get my “What Comes Next” series off the ground, anyway.

That’s not to say it was a completely boring movie.  There were a lot of slow moments, but there were also some really great scenes.  There is a fantastic scene in an apple orchard.  There’s no dialogue (a song plays the entire time), but it’s perfect.  Everything I would want in the event of a zombie apocalypse.  Running wild.  Having fun.  Doing anything you want to do, because there’s no one around to tell you that you can’t.  After watching these two guys bicker for the last hour, it’s good to see them having some fun and smashing the hell out of some rotten apples with a bat.  It’s an amazing scene.  And the music is terrific.

I was also a huge fan of the scene where they get drunk in their car.  Because apparently having fun during a zombie apocalypse is something that is appealing to me.

The more I think about it, the more I think I really like this.  It’s not perfect, but there’s far more good than bad here.  If you can get past the lingering camera shots, you’ll find there’s a lot to like here.  It’s something different, and I like that.  And the soundtrack is dynamite. 

For my final thought, I’ll turn to a quote by Ben:

“Don’t you think we got enough to worry about without having to worry about each other?”  The central question of every zombie movie, going back to Night of the Living Dead: who should we fear the most, zombies or humans?

Rating: 4/5

The Battery is currently available on VOD through iTunes, Amazon, Vudu and others.  Check the website.

Here’s the trailer:

Here are some extra posters that I enjoyed: