Verdict
Summary
As close to the bottom of the barrel as you can get before hitting the dregs, Haven’s End fails miserably to drum up some sympathy with its boring, stock characters, and when things start looking grim when the zombie show up, the film still can’t decide what kind of apocalyptic movie it wants to participate in.
Plot:
A series of catastrophes all across the United States resets the human race, and one ER surgeon and her fiancé try to survive with a few friends while on the run for safety.
Review:
The CDC in Atlanta is bombed, setting the stage for a series of cataclysmic events that puts the United States back to the stone age with no electricity, no means of communication, and no help from anywhere. A surgeon (played by voice over actress Catherine Taber) and her Army dude bro fiancé (Anthony Nguyen who wears a shirt that reads “Army” through the movie) pack up their stuff and head to a survivalist friend of theirs who lives a sheltered lifestyle in the wilderness. Along for the ride is their pregnant lesbian friend (who is a constant supply of complaints, quips, and ironic sentiments) who is desperate to get back to her wife, but when they arrive at the warehouse location where their survivalist friend lives, they are besieged by (literally) unseen marauders in the woods who shoot at them. The lesbian wisecracker is wounded, and they make off with a bunch of weapons, gear, food, and their survivalist friend to boot. They head deeper into the woods where they encounter the surgeon’s drug using good-for-nothing brother and his girlfriend who’ve been squatting in a big camper trailer, and instead of being greeted by them, the surgeon and her squad are assaulted, and the survivalist is killed straightaway. After calming down, the bunch of them try fixing a CB radio, discover that things are worse than they could’ve imagined, and then over the next few days they all begin hallucinating, turning even more aggressive towards each other, and must deal with some zombies that straggle in from the city, but worse still is that the surgeon’s brother becomes a raging and insane killer. There’s something in the air that is turning people against each other …
As close to the bottom of the barrel as you can get before hitting the dregs, Haven’s End fails miserably to drum up some sympathy with its boring, stock characters, and when things start looking grim when the zombie show up, the film still can’t decide what kind of apocalyptic movie it wants to participate in. Poorly written and directed (by Michael H. Harper and Chris Ethridge), this pretty much lost me right at the start with its stilted dialogue, awkward casting, and a situation that never had me believing.
Mill Creek’s DVD includes a Digital Code, plus a commentary by the director and writer (and the producer and Taber), plus the trailer.
