Dead Within (2014) User Reviews

A movie that left me annoyed and empty within

[anushas-01098 · 3/10 · 5 March 2019]

The Dead Within started out good. I was interested in the couple and what could have been going on out there to make them hide out the way they were.

Kim and Mike seemed happy at the dinner party. They have an unusual routine- Mike goes out, Kim stays in, they have dinner dates with what supplies Mike can find outside. The dinner dates and dresses were a little unusual and made me curious.

This intro to the characters held my interest and made me keep watching... but it just got worse from there.

Kim is a little stir crazy and her husband is having more difficulty finding resources. There are a few threatening sounds outside...

Kim talks to a "ranger" who claims to be rescue but we aren't sure if this is real or imagined. This ranger gets abusive as the movie progresses.

Kim descends into madness, especially in the third act and we see a lot of scary post traumatic stress dreams/hallucinations/images. I will give this movie credit for portraying post traumatic stress accurately. The actress also did a good job with what she was given script wise.

My problem is the path this movie took. It chose to focus on Kim's descent from stir crazy to psychotic breakdown.

What I was really hoping was the movie would focus on the Ranger.

The idea of a rescue not being a rescue isn't new in zombie movies, but the lonely Kim looking for company and finding dangerous company in the Ranger seems way more interesting and less discombobulating than a bunch of flashbacks and trauma scenes.

At one point Kim said with agency that she is doing an important job: she isn't doing nothing. She's keeping watch while her husband is away.

I really liked this hint of development for Kim. I wanted her to grow stronger and deal with the Ranger character in some way. I wanted to see her become smarter, braver, and more competent.

This direction has much more room for growth for Kim than what the writers chose.

When she killed her husband she was angry he cooped her up (understandable). She said something about her being competent and able and that she didn't need to be cooped up like how she was.

What Kim said about her competency might be true, but the movie didn't give her a chance to prove it. She's never seen what's out there and there is lot of evidence she's mentally unstable.

For her to say she IS competent struck me as a bit childish. I wanted more maturity and growth from her character. Based on what I saw in the movie, I'm not convinced Kim would be competent outside.

The ending was pure garbage. I didn't care when she opened the door and ran out. I knew at that point I would really dislike this movie.

I felt her black eyes at the end and her husband appearing again to kill her was a cheap trick. How would he pop out of nowhere like that? Come on! It's also a major stretch to say Kim is infected. I can't see how that would be possible without giving the plot major leeway.

I invested my time and energy in this movie based on the first third, but got absolutely no payoff.

This movie is like the theater has run out of popcorn when you try to claim your refill :(

Rated by zombies

[begob · 5/10 · 9 February 2015]

Good pace on a difficult two-hander. Better than Moon, I reckon.

Acting very good, and the sound track maintains tension along with cuts in visuals. The dialogue could have been livelier - the characters had their niggles, but both were reserved personalities. Timeline jumps about a bit, so keep an eye on the hand bandage.

Not sure the final shot was necessary - perfectly satisfied with psychosis induced by grief and cabin fever. And how/when could it have happened to her? Maybe a spinning cam in the sunshine with a zombie jaws final frame was best bet.

One thing that bugged me was no explanation for running water until about 40 mins in, when it cut off. People - in a zombie apocalypse you'll die of thirst or typhoid way before the brain gobblers get you. So it's important! Then the water turned on again, and I couldn't figure out if it was hallucination.

Not as good as The Battery - sort of indoors version without the humour - but definitely deserves higher rating.

edit: the ranger story wasn't resolved, so point lost.

It could have been at least good.

[OhScarlett · 3/10 · 2 October 2014]

This was a half hearted attempt at an interesting twist on the 'survival after zombie outbreak' movie. The entire movie takes place in a cabin with essentially two characters. As a fan of this kind of movie I really thought it was gearing up to be more realistic than most. Not every zombie apocalypse can be the constant excitement of zombies around every corner where the average person suddenly has the knowledge and physical ability to use everything around them as a weapon and fight to the victorious end against a world that has gone awry. Here you have two people that have lost everything and everyone but each other. Including the ultimate loss for a family. He just wants to keep her safe and never let her be in harms way, however he's given her the most serious case of cabin fever ever. You can only stay in seclusion, in basically one room, before your cheese starts to slide off your cracker and hers is going quickly. So it sounds like a great premise for a darn good psychological thriller... but they dropped the ball. They never let you in on how the end of the world happened, when it happened, or what led up to them being in their current state. You aren't even let in on the details of how the zombie funk spreads from one person to the next or what the symptoms of infection are, which is generally important to know. There is no character development at all. You never find out who these people were or why she incapable of doing more than getting dressed for dinner or washing a dish. Are these zombies so skilled in undead combat that she can't even walk into the yard occasionally? Which leads you to not feel invested in either characters well being. I think I felt more for the poor dog than the people. Personally, I feel like it's not worth the time investment. The last 5-7 minutes is the only time anything really happens and even then, it lacked substance. All in all it seemed like the trailer for a decent survival movie that never got made.

A long boring meal...

[lunchboxwanderer · 1/10 · 14 September 2014]

With no dessert.

A story about nothing.

Unless, and this could have made it awesome, they had made it about two meth heads going through a 5 day binge beset by paranoia.

It was nonsensical.

Clearly, the budget had to have been about 30 dollars maybe $40.

Message to the makers, give the woman a reason for paranoid psychosis.

If that had been introduced, especially at the end it would have been a great twist.

The way it ended, was bleck.

She's been bitten and going zombie insane. Like none of us have seen that before.

Dead within...is how it left me feeling

[bushtony · 2/10 · 15 September 2014]

Remarkable, the synthesis of film title and invoked emotion. I certainly felt dead within after watching it.

The film is set in a shed, features only two characters (four, if you count the brief turn by two others...OK, five if you count the baby...dog makes it six at a stretch) and the action moves outside on only one occasion at the end. To be fair, the visual quality of the film isn't too shabby, but there ain't a lot to look at during the running time.

The dialogue is atrocious, the narrative is a recycled zombie-by-numbers riff and the acting is altogether rather dire. There is nil characterisation and therefore nil audience investment in the characters - so what happens to them doesn't matter and therefore tedium is irretrievably cemented early on. The tone is boring as the trajectory of the story (such as it is) is underpinned by verbal and visual repetition. There is a vague plundering of Polanski's "Repulsion" as the chick goes hysterically off her rocker but here imitation is hardly the sincerest form of flattery. Overall it's a dragging shrieking drone into the void.

I'll give it credit for being made with next to no money and looking visually better than it probably has any right to - edited on an iMac with a copy of Final Cut Pro, right? But that's as charitable as I'm prepared to be.

It may find a casual audience on the back of "The Walking Dead," "World War Z" pop-interest in zombie plague media out there, but there are far better genre examples available and the clued-in will be informed by word of mouth to avoid like...well, like the plague.

I can't honestly recommend.

The budget for this movie is $100 bucks

[gshihyi · 1/10 · 17 September 2014]

I could've made this movie from my bedroom. The story was somewhat interesting but was executed in a very bad bad way. It could be much better but the director only focus on One thing which is so not important. I mean, we get it!! The audiences have sense. For instance, if you want make a movie is about people taking showers is important, you really don't have to make a whole movie showing shower scene only. You can just watch the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes, trust me you won't miss anything. Or you can just fast forward. If anyone would try to copy the movie's concept and make a short video on youtube, all you have to do just lock yourself in your room for couple days I believe it will be more fun to watch than this movie.

I really wanted to like this but...

[erostew · 2/10 · 20 October 2014]

I ended up hating it.

I saw the low ratings and decided to give it a shot anyway. It's the kind of movie that has the potential to give us situational horror instead of just another gore-fest. I like character driven movies if they can deliver compelling characters and an interesting story. Sadly Dead Within just doesn't deliver. On any front.

As another reviewer mentions: It isn't a Zombie flick. He's right. It is the result of somebody having the idea to make a Zombie movie but not having any real cash to spend. Basically: "We can't afford the costs of having a horde of Zombies in our movie so we will basically shoot most of it in one small set with only 2 actors, and the story will be about the people trying to survive and not about the Zombies."

Unfortunately the creators of this micro-budgeted waste of time make the same mistakes as so many other low-budget filmmakers: They seem to have hired actors because they would work cheap instead of hiring them because they can act.

I don't want to mislead you into thinking that the acting is the only bad component of this movie though. The direction and editing are lousy too. Camera-work is not terrible but it certainly doesn't add anything to the viewing experience. It's shaky and hand-held low-budget stuff. The writing, if you can call it that is unoriginal and tells a disjointed story with way too many flashbacks. The ending is pretty much NOT a surprise. Despite having four credited writers, two of them being the lead actors, it feels mostly improvised. There isn't much in the way of special effects and what there is is pretty amateur. The "Zombies" are basically people with black contacts. Those contacts, some gauze and some black "blood" that looks like used motor oil are the majority of the makeup effects.

The only bright light in the whole sorry effort is the sound. It SOUNDS creepy.

2 out of 10

Another dull Zombie Apoc.

[Krackoon · 1/10 · 16 September 2014]

We've seen it many times before, and we've seen it done a lot better.

I'm not a huge fan of zombie apocalypse films to begin with, and 'Dead Within' is just another crap fest to add to the list. The plot is simple, the characters are terrible, the dialogue is beyond awful, and the acting is rather dreadful, too. If you decide to give 'Dead Within' a try, you'll soon realize that there simply isn't anything here worth reviewing - a lot of films are so bad, that you can sit back and toss out a few lines of sarcasm, but 'Dead Within' isn't even capable of accomplishing that.

Random Ramblings of a Madman: Just go to bed.

An atypical zombie movie

[peterp-450-298716 · 6/10 · 11 June 2015]

"Baby, maybe we're just both crazy. What if we're, like, in The Truman Show ? There is no plague. And...there's cameras everywhere."

I'm certain that many will speak disparagingly about this movie. Typical statements as a total lack of tension, a deadly dull storyline, a cheaply produced film at a single location and the absence of confrontational, brutal and bloody images with zombies feasting on human flesh, will be used in abundance. But admit it, most zombie films use the same clichéd image of a slow walking living corpse, hungry for fresh blood, with a pale gray face with lifeless eyes in dark eye sockets staring into nothingness. "World War Z" used a very different approach to the phenomenon zombie and their characteristics were highlighted in a very different way. In "Dead Within" you only have the nasty outside sounds and short excerpts of transformed creatures. And frankly, I thought the opening fragment with those awful noises was quite frightening: the primitive growling and screeching nocturnal creatures (weird but it reminded me of "Jurassic Park") and the cries in terror of the victims being dismembered. Turn the sound wide open and those hysterical cries will give you the shivers.

Apart from the opening scene (a staggering three split view with out of sync customized images) and the final scene, the complete film takes place in a wooden cabin somewhere in a forest at an unknown place. We see how Mike (Dean Chekvala) and Kim (Amy Cale Peterson), along with their newborn baby Lily and dog Teddy, arrive at the cabin of their friends Todd and Erika, where they probably expected to enjoy a long relaxing weekend. First there are fragments of them socializing. But this is abruptly broken off, and we see Mike and Kim on a dowdy mattress with a machete and a kind of riot-gun by their side. After a while we learn that they are hiding for 6 months already in this barricaded hut, letting no one inside because a deadly virus has spread (though if that happened locally or globally is a non-answered question) which transforms living creatures into black-eyed undead with ink black blood flowing through their veins. Apparently it affects every living being (the dog Teddy is a living proof of that). I asked myself at that time if there could be deadly squirrels or rabbits creeping through the woods.

For the horror freaks who enjoy gory movies with plenty of severed limbs and gore scenes, I can already tell them that this will be a total disappointment. The only thing we are witnessing is the gradual change that Kim is undergoing caused by the total isolation. Mike is the only one who leaves the cabin on a regular basis (where he is risking his health and life every time) to seek for food and other consumables. Kim tries to kill her time by cleaning up once again, playing the guitar and to create a wall painting. It's obvious that after a while the two survivors not only need to fear what's wandering outside, but also realize that the growing paranoia and the realization that their situation seems to be hopeless becomes a threat. We see Kim evolving into a state of fairly psychotic behavior with delusions and conversations with imaginary people.

Is it an excellent movie? No, not exactly. The repetitive situations and the lack of information won't make it an exciting movie. The use of flashbacks provide a partial explanation but after a while that starts to innervate anyway. The minimalistic use of real horror images also isn't an advantage. Is it a dreadful movie? No, not exactly either. The inner tension and the constant threatening atmosphere made sure it was entertaining in a way. And especially the performances of the two protagonists is magnificent. It's not obvious to portray such a situation in a convincing way. It's the same familiar situation as with two people who sat together for a long time in a confined space and trifles start to irritate them. "Dead within" is an atypical zombie movie where the emphasis is more on the psychological state of mind of survivors than on the destructive nature of mutated creatures. A survival film avant la lettre with anxiety, guilt and madness as a central theme.

More reviews here : http://bit.ly/1KIdQMT

Too little too late

[LiamBlackburn · 5/10 · 15 September 2014]

Hello! Is there anybody out there? There's trollers everywhere outside the house! Do you think I'm a troller? Kim? Kim what's your favourite dress...? Kim are you fat? What if this all like the truman show? Laughs....Is this the script? I think I can come up with a script for this movie just as quickly. The screenplay is abominable. You barely see any zombies at any points. The entire movie takes place inside a cabin. THe actors try hard but the screenplay is poor...can't fault them. Every few minutes there's a jump-scare, with a pounding thud, and the shrieking of a zombie.....it gets so old so fast. THis is a movie to pass on my friend. Every few minutes a dumb jump-scare. A shrieking zombie. It doesn't go into the source of the outbreak barely. It all revolves around the two people and how the girl gradually goes insane from staying in the cabin. The whole movie is really slow, until the absolute last few minutes......boring!

It's not a zombie movie, it's better

[betraeger · 10/10 · 17 September 2014]

Wow, was I watching the same movie?

First off, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I can't believe the previous users and reviews are calling this movie boring, slow, or that they have seen it before.

I thought the movie was suspenseful the entire time. Even though it was a limited cast, the acting was spot on and exactly what I look for in this genre.

If you want gore and nudity, you are looking in the wrong place, go re-watch one of the installments of Friday the 13th, which are all the same, so take your pick.

ALSO THIS ISN'T A ZOMBIE MOVIE!

The poster may be perceived as misleading, but we all should be able to get past that.

It could be just about anything outside the door, just like Cabin in the Woods. It's a sad story about two people who have lost everything. It frankly, was a lot more believable to me.

It's more like Open Water than Dawn of the Dead or Evil Dead.

I also really enjoyed discovering the prequel web series AFTER I had watched the film, it was a nice extension of the piece and hope they continue to post more episodes on the site.

Closed in

[kosmasp · 7/10 · 16 October 2014]

Obviously you can argue, that the main theme might have worked as a short movie too and I wouldn't completely disagree. But this movie has something to say and it's not always a bad thing to really take time to tell the story. This reminds me a bit of "Right at your door", though it was the superior movie, this still has things going for it (main performance is exhausting).

The title kind of says a lot, if you think about it. Maybe it can help you make sense of some things. The movie could be interpreted in different ways if you will. But that is up to the viewer, because there is not that much happening, which is why some people sort of hate it, here on IMDb/in general. That's OK, because this obviously is not everyones cup of tea. If you like slow, but still gut punching horror, this is for you ... which also allows you to think for yourself

Just nod if you can hear me.

[nogodnomasters · 4/10 · 21 March 2018]

The film opens with two couples celebrating and then the next thing you know there are just two people living in a remote cabin who have barricaded themselves in because of some unknown zombie like infection. Mike (Dean Chekvala) dares to go outside to scrounge for food while his wife Kim (Amy Cale Peterson) stays inside and goes squirrelly from cabin fever. That is the entire film and nearly all of it is filmed from inside the cabin. Two characters, one setting, boring dialogue. It was like watching "The Road" as I kept waiting for an explanation or something to happen or the scenery to change.

If you want to watch a zombie film, without zombies, that is character driven, this could be your film. Why someone would make something like that, I have no idea.

Parental Guide: F-bomb, brief sex, brief nudity.

Pitiful

[RLucik · 1/10 · 27 June 2021]

Sticking needles ln my eyes would have been less painful than sitting thru this fiasco.

Lead sled that never really left the ground

[draciron · 5/10 · 20 April 2015]

The script for this movie was probably excellent, the execution should have been taken out and shot. The movie is about a pandemic of some sort leaving a couple isolated and trapped in a remote cabin in the woods while it unfolds. When I say unfolds I use the term loosely as the movie gets stuck very early and the over use of flash backs causes it to drag on and on. Attempts to create emotional connection just leave you bored at best. They come far too late in the movie, you are saying OK already I got it 30 minutes ago, what happens next? The problem is nothing happens for a very long time. The positive reviewers of this movie are the ones who do not get it. The movie spells out the ending with blinding clarity but for some reason many people want to make it into more. The ending was never meant to be more than a culmination. There IS NO discovery, no revelation. No insight into the nature of mankind or deeper hidden meaning. The script was meant to be a journey not a destination. I cannot be more specific without giving away the movie, but suffice it to say that the director missed the point of the movie and irrevocably damaged it in the process. They thought they were being clever but instead it took the heart out of what could have been a very good movie.

It's not bad, it just isn't very good, either

[macguffin54 · 5/10 · 19 June 2015]

Very vague, minor spoilers. First, there are zombies in this movie. Only 2 (well, 3, maybe 4), and they are only on screen mainly for a very brief flashback, but they are there. But beyond that I think this could have been a decent little movie. The acting isn't great, but it serves its purpose. The problem is not much happens to string the movie along to its conclusion. I think, perhaps, if they made the subplot with the baby even slighter bigger (or even slightly less implied and more direct) it would have given the movie more depth. And if there had been a bigger "to-do" outside at the end, where they actually could have had a full action/dramatic scene rather than a quick jolt. The movie wasn't about scares, anyway. So why end that way and take away one of the few opportunities to show something happening (other than her opening the front door)?

Artsy fartsy crap

[teebear817 · 1/10 · 22 May 2021]

Torture. Sinply torture. Artsy fartsy garbage. Lousy ambiguous ending. 90 minutes of 2 unlikeable creeps talking in a cabin. You never see the adversary. Just AWFUL.

Haters Are Missing the Point

[ArdentViewer · 7/10 · 26 January 2015]

I'm glad I gave the movie a chance given the low ratings. It wasn't a zombie movie (as others have said) but a psychological thriller, a journey into the recesses of the human mind. I admit it was boring at first, but I quickly became intrigued with the concept. I soon realized that things weren't necessarily as they seemed (or were portrayed). I began questioning what was real, and what might have been a figment of Kim's imagination. For a film taking place in a single setting with only two characters, it managed to keep me guessing and wondering until the end. I think people always expect constant action, thrills, effects (often to the detriment of the story and the characters) and simply can't deal with anything deeper, more thoughtful, more intricate, and dare I say it - more subtle. I prefer suspense to action and gore any day of the week, and this film delivered. If you are someone open to a slow, interesting build rather than all flash and no substance, you should give it a shot.

My ultimate summary statement would probably be something like - "What goes on inside your head can be far scarier than any outside threat."

Fear is contagious!

[barna-brbs · 9/10 · 1 November 2014]

It is not a zombie movie. Not a classic horror film. It has a very deep meaning.

The movie has the right atmosphere, gloomy until the very end. The woman - Kim - is nerve-racking, plays very well.

The poster's headline is giving us what it is all about: Fear is contagious. The whole movie is about the Fear. The epidemic which cause black-blood, and black-eye is the Fear itself. It is a symbol (when someone is full of fear, he can not see what is real, he is blind, "black-eyed". Also it can show, that almost the entire human population get this "virus". Everyone is afraid of something (death, pain, poverty, powerless, aloneness..). The fear can grow so big, that it can lead the person. And it is very dangerous... It makes people sick, psychotic. As in the movie, Kim gets crazy - believing that she is right! She saw things which were unreal. She is dead, she is not alive, she only exists in her mind. Do you think Ranger Mark was real? Maybe it was her conscience (? wanted to save her?)... Her partner, Mike, was also not "healty".. He wanted to possess the woman, and at the end, he ran to his fate..

This movie asks the question: do you want to live your life, and say no to fear(even if it is inside), or do you want to be like a zombie? What is more important than this?

So, in my view, this movie is very deep, intelligent work. Thanks. (Sorry for the poor English.)

Finally, another intelligent horror flick!

[annika-222-831534 · 8/10 · 20 October 2014]

The person who wrote the review before me was right - this is not a zombie flick. This is a film about a woman struggling with her own sanity. If you like being spoon fed your stories, then go watch Scary Movie or some other teen slasher. Any writer than can keep you in suspense using only one or two characters and no real, visible threat is a true talent, indeed!

I would liken this more to Pontypool than Evil Dead. Blood, guts and rotten zombies are not only UNscary, they are also over done.

I do, however, wish that more questions were answered at the end (eg: What was up with Ranger Mark?" and that we were left with a more unique twist at the end (it was very generic).

Other than that, I was biting my nails almost through the entire thing, well done.

The rest of you are idiots.

More Psychological Study than Zombie Movie

[sgcim · 9/10 · 22 January 2015]

There have been so many zombie movies made that I usually stop watching them after thirty minutes on streaming Netflix because many of them are the same basic story over and over again. Dead Within offered a new twist on the zombie genre without having to resort to either gore, or supposedly ironic humor.

Zombie comedies were novel for a while, but the novelty soon wore off after you've seen a few of them. Dead Within was a psychological drama modeled on Polanski's Repulsion, and offered two good performances by the leads, good direction, good writing and improvisation by the two leads, and fine camera work. There's an official website for the movie that has a six part web prequel, a number of fake and real news articles about the CINS Virus, fake Twitter messages detailing the back story of the film, youtube messages by the 'Skull Monkey, and even a manga version. One clue to the plot that no one seemed to have noticed was when the female lead was playing the guitar for a brief scene- the guitar had no strings on it!

Low-key, but very effective slow burner

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 17 January 2018]

Mike (a sturdy and credible performance by Dean Chekvala) and his wife Kim (a fine and touching portrayal by Amy Cale Peterson) are a young married couple who hole up in a remote cabin in the woods in the wake of a zombie outbreak. However, Mike must venture outside into the dangerous world and leave Kim by herself on a daily basis after their supplies begin to dwindle.

Director/co-writer Ben Wagner ably crafts a suffocating claustrophobic atmosphere that makes the viewers feel like they are trapped in the cramped cabin along with the two desperate main characters. Moreover, Wagner astutely captures the overwhelming hopelessness of the bleak situation and brings a wrenching poignancy to the gripping premise by relating it on a small intimate scale, with Kim's gradual descent into madness in particular packing a potent emotional punch. The strong acting by the two leads further keeps this picture humming. While the slow pace and lack of cheap jump-out-at-you jolts will tax the patience of fright film fans expecting a standard formula scarefest, anyone else with a taste for slow-burning psychological suspense should appreciate this nice little sleeper's admirably smart and subtle approach to the zombie horror genre.