Flicks Picks 11: City of Rott

Walk away...While you still can.

Hello again, Streakers! Boog here, with the eleventh Flick Pick article. I know I mentioned at the end of my last review, that I was thinking of doing a sports film. Well, while that is true, I'm still getting my thought together on which sport to do, and, I'll admit, I got distracted. You see, I had heard some rumors of animated zombie film released a few years back(Imdb says 2006, the production team site says 2005, none of the critic reviews agree), that was supposedly really good. I do my research, and find out that not only does this film exist, it is the sole effort of one man, doing everything, the animation, sound editing, even all the character voices, over the course of a single year, to make this film. While I must say I am impressed to find such single minded determination and drive out there, this film wasn't worth it. I really want to be supportive of independent effort like this, because just the fact that it got made, let alone found by a studio to be put onto a DVD, is a testament to the man behind it. But facts are facts, and Frank Sudol's one man animation debut City of Rott just does not stand up, or really stand out, anywhere. SPOILERS, yo. He has since done two other films animated in the same fashion, one called Dead Fury, and another called Shock Invasion. With each new effort, I will give him this, he seems to actually listen to the criticism he receives, and change and grow with each new project. That said, there was a lot of room to grow from this starting point. First, let me talk a bit about what I liked about this film, and that was some bits in the visual style. Sudol's animation style here is clunky, using stop motion over paper dolls, like South Park. Only Sudol's paper dolls look much nicer. Don't get me wrong, I love South Park. But the construction paper puppets just get to me sometimes. Here we get something more like the paper dolls from the movies of the 50s and 60s like your parents or grandparents used to play with. He also gives them independent limbs movement, jaw movement, and overall does a decent job with character animations. But that's about it. The stop motion feels incredibly slow and chunky, with some shots even focusing on feet to compensate for the fact that he obviously didn't want to animate all the bodies he had placed to screen. Then there's the zombies, and there counterparts, blood an gore. There are maybe 12 different zombies in this movie, all of the blood, if it isn't on a character or floor, is drawn in what I can only describe as caviar like balls, and the guts are just squiggles. They just move a little. Before you get all over me about it being one guy and how dare insult him by saying he's lazy or something: His production site states his original cut of the film was only 54 minutes long (I'll get into THAT in a bit), but when the studio group Unearthed Films started looking at it, and decided to put it on a DVD, they wanted it as a feature, and so got him to pad the film out with another 22 Minutes of gore and violence. I'll let that sink in for a minute.

Look nice, don't I? Screen time alive: Maybe 2 minutes.

The director/producer/writer/star found out that the only way people were going to see his labour of love was to pad it with the equivalent of a Saturday Morning Cartoon's length in blood and guts. And he agreed. Does anybody else see a problem here? I can get the fact that Sudol made this as an homage to classic zombie franchises like Romero's Dead films, but 22 minutes? Given that almost 75% of that extra length are small bits of zombies 'chewing' on victims, even as hardcore fan of zombie films, I find that excessive, and boringly repetitive. And there's the main problem in a nutshell. Sudol even made the music for the film, and even it's repetitive and boring by the end. Every track is some kind of industrial-esque techno that tries rather desperately to seem exciting. The plot, what little there is, at first tries to be funny by focusing the story on a crazy old man who decides to go into a zombie infested city to find a new pair of shoes. Sadly, the plot we are given to replace this about 40 minutes in, isn't any better. There's some rather blatant subtext shoved at you about consumerism, but it comes off as very trite and pretentious, rather than deep or meaningful. His acting, since his is the only voice you will hear in the film, is pretty damn terrible as well. But the main performance problem, the fact that the main character hears voice and talks to them, is due to poor editing, and one very easily fixed mistake. You see, the main character keeps finding objects to apply the voice in his head too, usually his walker, and the character's mouth doesn't move when it's supposed to be the voice in his head. But that makes sense, you say, why is that a problem?

See, the art's not that bad. Just everything else is...

Because Mr. Sudol DOESN'T ALTER THE VOICE AT ALL TO MAKE YOU REALIZE IT'S A DIFFERENT CHARACTER. This makes a lot of the scenes appear amateur, as it seems like either Sudol forgot to animate the character's mouth, or forgot to edit out dialogue. It makes it even worse when their are other characters who speak onscreen, especially when they have to react to fact that only half the lines being spoken in their presence are ones they can hear. This makes the film sound, writing and dialogue wise, like a low rent high school play, except they can curse because they signed a permission slip. Then we get really bogged down in the pretension. You see, about 45 minutes in, the film even gets tired of our main character and kills him off. Why? So we can pad out this crap with another three pointless deaths, bringing our body count of actual humans to... five, if I remember correctly, and so we can have a character who was in one scene before this, literally stand above our main character and berate him for being a 'zombie'. Yeah, the subtext I mentioned before? Well, appropriately enough, as the scene is in an alley, the subtext finds a pipe and proceeds to beat you to death. And then rummage through your pocket for change. It's supposed to give us closure on behalf of the main character, who we've followed throughout this entire movie(the last 20 minutes as a zombie no less), as he 'fights off' the effects of the zombie parasite, and finds a way to remove them, basically killing himself as his last human act. There's something else I forgot to mention. The zombie cause in this film is a fluid-borne parasite worm, one that destroys your brain, and then forces you to eat to feed itself. Basically it serves as a metaphorical parallel to mankind, one more way to shove that message down your throat.

Yep, just a zombie, and a zombie hooker. No joke here. Got nothin.

So, Overall, what did I think of this movie? As a first solo effort, (Sudol's Imdb page lists him as part of the animation crew on the South Park movie) it show that Sudol is a decent animator, one that should be given a larger shot at project with a budget. As an animator. Get him away from the mixers, and the microphones, and for god sakes get him away from the script. But let him animate and draw. It's the only part of this film that showed any promise whatsoever, and it was good enough that, with time, and proper training, I think Mr. Sudol could do some great things. But two things have to happen. First, his production company would have to go under. Not to seem overly antagonistic, but let me explain. You see, from the looks of things, after this got picked up, he got help in the acting department. So it stands to reason he could have also gotten producers, writers, and so on, to help out, and at least make the process of film making shorter, if not better. But he didn't. On purpose. Because, like toddler that hasn't yet grasped the true consequences of the second crib in the house, he doesn't want to share his toys. He wants full creative control, and I respect that. I really do. The problem for me, is, if he's the only one in control, the end product is one thing I film should never be: BORING. Therefore, he needs to dissolve the company, or at least hire some people to work for him. But he won't do that, until he's forced to. The problem now, ironically enough, is that public perception is now that 'indie' means 'deep, insightful, and definitely always better than Hollywood', and unfortunately, that is not always the case, as this film very painfully illustrates. Like I said at the beginning, I respect the man's drive, and ambition. I respect the potential he shows as an animator. However, I can't sit back and say that just because this is an independent production, that it deserves to seen. In my humble opinion, the visuals alone aren't enough to save this film, and you should probably avoid it. Now, what sport to do....

Oh and sorry for the lack of pictures, I just couldn't find that many that didn't focus on the blood and gore, and were therefore kind of blurry.