Horrorfest 2012: Rammbock

Now we head to Germany for a recent zombie flick called RAMMBOCK. The title translates to "battering ram," which refers to a scene in the film in which a couple of the characters fashion a rudimentary battering ram in order to travel from one apartment to the other without entering the hallway. Why this is important enough to get title status, I'm not sure, though at least RAMMBOCK sounds kinda cool.

The problem with zombie movies is that they're all pretty similar. This was all right when you'd get maybe one per decade, but over the last 10 years or so it seems to have become the go-to subgenre for horror filmmakers and fans. Now, as long as a movie is good, I don't really care whether it is original or unique or anything like that. A good example of a tried and true formula is good enough for me. Still, when there are so many others like you, it just becomes that much harder to stand out from the crowd or rise above the level of mediocrity.

I'm afraid RAMMBOCK never really rises from mediocrity. It doesn't have very much new stuff to add to the zombie formula, and the stuff it cribs from other flicks is done competently enough but never really rises to the next level.

The main character is a put-upon, shy, awkward regular guy (Michael Fuith) who has just arrived in Berlin to return a set of keys to his ex-girlfriend (Anka Grazczyk). It's clear that he is hoping for this reunion to transform into a new beginning for his relationship, but when he arrives at the apartment he finds that she isn't there. Before he can figure out where she is, he's forced to barricade himself inside the apartment due to the untimely zombie apocalypse unfolding outside.

One kind of unique aspect of this flick is the way it uses the apartment building as a setting. The apartments are built around a grim courtyard, so the tenants are able to open their windows and yell back and forth to each other, requesting food, medicine, whatever. They're also able to witness the carnage below when zombies wander into the courtyard and take out unfortunate victims. This sense of several different people isolated in individual boxes, all witnessing the same horror, amplified the usual approach of one group of survivors barricading themselves inside a house or mall or whatever. The futility of how close yet how far away these people are from each other served to heighten the tension and add to the drama.

The other interesting aspect of this flick is how it uses the zombie outbreak to focus on the main character's relationship problems. He's so lovesick and obsessed that even as the world is ending, all he can think about is whether or not his ex-girlfriend might be calling him on the phone. This relationship and coming of age stuff was also touched upon in the far superior SHAUN OF THE DEAD, but it was an interesting angle here, just the same.