Stalled

Dir: Christian James

2013

***

I can see why audiences largely disliked Stalled and if I am being honest it isn’t a film I will ever watch again – unlike Shaun of the Dead – but I do have a lot of respect for it. It is a low budget production but I personally don’t like to take that into consideration, as Evil Dead and many of the classic Video Nasties were made for pennies but they are all inventive and made with passion. Stalled can proudly stand among those classic horrors of the 70s and 80s in that it is inventive and has been made by people with a true love and passion for the genre. They also clearly know what they’re doing, even if they don’t have millions to play with. It was unfair of me to mention Shaun of the Dead really as the only thing the two films have in common are the fact that they are both zombie films and they are both British. There is a strong element of British humour in Stalled that reminded me of Shaun of the Dead but it isn’t quite as funny or successful but it is still quite charming. I suppose it is a little more like Keith Wright’s terribly underrated 2011 film Harold's Going Stiff but then again it does have its own slant that makes it truly unique. It is actually far more Hitchcockian than either of the other films, juggling two tricks rather than one. Zombie films are both easy and notoriously difficult to make. You have to abide by the rules while also trying to bend them in a way to make your film stand out. 28 Days Later did this quite simply by making their zombies run, rather than stagger as was classical. There are now several different types of zombie but by and large they all keep to the rules established by the late great George A Romero. The ones that don’t keep to the rules are generally rejected by the fans. You can keep telling the same story again and again, just as long as you put a clever and unique twist on it. Stalled does that brilliantly by limiting itself. Why any film maker would limit themselves is quite puzzling but that is why Stalled is so clever. The film takes place on Christmas Eve in an office block during a Christmas office party. Office maintenance worker W. C. (star and writer Dan Palmer) is busy fixing the lights in the woman's toilets, having taken the antisocial shift to steal money from the office while no one would be watching him. While in the toilet W.C. decides to take a load off and plays games on his phone in a cubicle. Two female party revelers soon enter the toilet and engage in a brash conversation. Not wanting to seem like a pervert, W.C. waits until they leave before coming out. However, the girls decide to kiss and engage in a bit of soft-core action until one bites the other on the neck. Soon, W.C. is barricading himself in the cubicle from the two zombie women. Before long, many various zombies are after W.C., the toilet cubicle being his refuge and his prison. Throughout the film, W.C. comes up with often hilarious but always inventive methods of escape that really keeps the film alive. You forget that everything is filmed within the confines of a small toilet and somehow the possibilities become endless. This is a very hard trick to pull off and I think they managed it with heaps of charm. Many a low-budget horror film gives itself a Christmas theme to stand out from the rest but Stalled is justifiably set at Christmas given the unique situation. It isn’t Christmassy in the slightest, it is very much a zombie apocalypse film, but how else would they have got so many fancy-dress zombies involved in a boring old office building. That aspect reminded me of Dawn of the Dead quite a bit and it is obviously a loving tribute of sorts – a very British one at that – switching the possibilities of a vast shopping mall for the confines of a ladies toilet. The many nods of classic horror/zombie films is nice but Stalled also brings its own magic to the mix. I don’t watch a lot of low budget horror because life is precious but I like a Christmas themed horror and Stalled is one of the best I’ve seen for some time. Unlike most low budget horrors, Stalled has a good script and the dialogue is fine. The direction is impressive – especially considering the space – and the editing is superb. Stalled uses just the right mix of thrills, gore, laughs and genuinely touching character moments to make it a superior Christmas horror.