Humpday Horror with the Jolly Goblin: "Automaton Transfusion"

Automaton Transfusion (2006)

Starring: Garrett Jones, Juliette Reeves, William Howard Bowman

Directed by Steven C Miller

Low-budget movies are a bit of an anomaly to a critic.  Am I to judge a movie that was filmed in nine days for $30,000 in the same way that I would judge a big summer blockbuster?  If movies like The Evil Dead or the more recent Paranormal Activity have taught us anything, it's that you don't need a boatload of money to make a compelling piece of cinema.  Miller knows this, and set out to make a movie far bigger than his budget aloud.

The movie opens to introduce a pretty generic cast of characters, with the most interesting part being a couple that includes a popular girl named Jackie (Juliet Reeves) and punk rock dude named Chris (Garrett Jones).  Clearly, their groups of friends don't see eye to eye and that causes a bit of tension.  They end up going their separate ways for the day, with Jackie going to a big party and Chris going into the city to see a band.

Soon, they both come to discover that there are zombies afoot, and bloody carnage ensues.  Everything is set up for either Chris or Jackie to go on a mission to save the other, but this movie doesn't go with a plot quite that predictable.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really replace it with anything else.  The couple reunite fairly quickly and the movie just meanders for the remainder of the runtime.

The opening scenes remain my favorite part of the movie, despite the fact that when zombies occasionally show up, nobody seems to notice.  These opening scenes have something that no other part of the movie has, though.  They have a camera that actually sits still.  The "shaky cam" in this movie is offensively bad and only succeeded in pissing me off every time zombies came on screen.  This is especially a shame because the gore is the one highlight of the film.  There's a lot of it, and it's rather new and interesting in some cases.  I just wish we could actually see it.

The plot is loose at best, and the script is pretty atrocious.  Like I said, it meanders after the first act, and I can't honestly say I understand why the characters did any of what they did throughout the film.  On top of that, the editing is terrible to the point that I couldn't really understand what was going on at certain points.  It was like there was an extra part that they forgot to shoot, which, given how quickly this movie was shot, is very likely.

The acting isn't any better, and the characters come off about as flat and two-dimensional as you would expect in a low-budget splatter flick.  In fact, almost everything is about what you'd expect for a low-budget splatter flick, and that's the problem.  It's all so completely derivative that you will just end up with the feeling of, "been there, done that."  That's not to say that you can't do a plot that's been done before and make it work, because you can.  Dance of the Dead has an almost identical plot to this one on paper, but it has characters that are interesting, dialogue that's well-written, and they know how to keep the camera still occasionally.  There's nothing wrong with hitting all the traditional beats, but Automaton Transfusion hits them all off-tempo and out of tune.

Finally, the ending (or lack thereof).  Do you remember the ending of The Matrix Reloaded?  Do you remember how well it was received that the movie ended with a blatant, "to be continued?"  Well, because it worked so well in that movie, they decided that it would be the best ending for this one as well.

All in all, Miller succeeded in one thing and one thing only.  He did make a gory, action-packed zombie flick.  In some cases that might be enough to make up for the shallow, muddled plot and lack of interesting characters, but when you can't see the action because the cameraman is having a seizure, it's most definitely not.

1/5

The Jolly Goblin (aka Zak Greene) has more to
say about horror films than anyone I know.
And yes, it hurts to admit that.