A man is stuck in a toilet stall during the zombie apocalypse. Sold!
Simple and effective horror comedy concept... totally amateurish and inept execution. The disappointment here is that with some actual talent behind and in front of the camera, this could have been a real gem.
Problems begin pretty much from the opening shot when you realise the lighting and cinematography are absolutely horrid. The film achieves this really cheap and cheerless look. It resembles an episode from one of those bad teen TV soap operas from the 1990's. This should immediately alert you to the fact that you're watching student filmmakers running amok with a budget.
Uh-oh.
Okay, so the cheap look can be forgiven because this is lo-fi comedy horror stuff. Fair enough right? Surely the film will make-up for that with wit and invention and gags. Right? Right??!
No.
The next major (and most crucial) problem; the writer of "Stalled", Dan Palmer, is also its star. And this is one of those writers that fancies himself an actor. And not only does he not have the chops to carry an entire feature film by himself, he can't deliver a single line of dialogue with conviction. It's as if he's trying to remember how his script sounded in his head when he came up with the dialogue. He may as well be reading the script to himself on the toilet. He's awful. If Palmer had taken his own ego and misguided acting aspirations out of the equation, they could have cast a semi-decent comedic actor in the lead.
It starts off with the promise of a somewhat "silent" horror comedy where our main character doesn't seem to speak much, if at all. But then the dialogue kicks in and, since Dan Palmer has no idea how to keep the story going without it, we get endless "f bombs" being dropped every other sentence, horribly muddled and dull lines delivered by people who just can't act, and long interludes of Palmer monloguing and emoting with embarrassing consequences. Accentuating sentences in the wrong places, forcing emotion with no help from the clueless director, Christian James.
Add in some unconvincing zombie make-up effects and mostly unfunny gags, and you have all the ingredients of a desperate "Shaun of the Dead" knock-off without the wit, invention or the talent.
It's a shame because it's got some smart ideas and a few neat ways of sustaining its simple concept over 80 minutes. I even quite liked the punchline at the end but the journey there was so unimaginative and glib that ultimately the whole experience smacked of a bunch of student filmmakers who got a little money together and extended a short film concept into a feature.
And that's what this should have been - a student short film and nothing more.
As much as I like to support independent films, when they are this amateur and poorly executed in (almost) every area, it's advisable to warn others against crossing paths with it.
Sorry "Stalled" but you really do belong in the toilet.
