With 6:15, writer/director Ben Samuels attempts to pull off the ambitious feat of a one-take, POV-style film set amidst a zombie plague.
While the one-take gimmick (which, calling it a “gimmick” doesn’t quite do it justice) has pervaded the filmmakers arsenal since the days of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, it has only recently begun to gain mainstream popularity, thanks in no small part to Alejandro Inarritu’s Birdman sweeping this year’s Academy Awards. And because the smash success of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead premiere proved that we have grown anything but tired with zombie mayhem by now (as I previously suggested), it was only a matter of time before the two mediums melded into one.
Thus, we have the trailer for writer/director Ben Samuels’ 6:15, an upcoming zombie feature not only claiming to have been shot in one continuous take, but with the added difficulty of being done point-of-view style, literally placing the audience inside the head of the protagonist.
ONE SHOT. REAL TIME. 1ST PERSON PERSPECTIVE.
With tonal homages to Romero, the audience *is* the protagonist, living the action and emotion of a viral outbreak on an isolated Pennsylvania farm. With Practical FX by three Face/Off contestants, what you see on camera in one-shot, in real-time, from the first-person perspective is a whole new level of immersive horror experience!
6:15 is a true horror indie, made outside the studio system on location in Romero’s Pennsylvania.
If any of this is sounding familiar, it might be because it bears a slight resemblance to “A Ride in the Park”, Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale’s entry in the horror anthology V/H/S II, in which a mountain biker’s transformation into a member of the undead is captured from the perspective of a GoPro camera attached to his helmet. Director Ilya Naishuller is also wrapping up production on a crowdfunded POV-style shoot ’em up flick called Hardcore, starring none other than District 9‘s Sharlto Copley. You can check out an extended clip of that movie over at Filmdrunk.
Based on the trailer, I think it’s safe to say that 6:15 will not be winning any Academy Awards (at least not in the acting department), but it does look like a fun riff on the zombie genre that will surely provide a few good scares. Considering that the popularity of zombie fiction is practically built around the escapist (name drop!) fantasy of inserting oneself into a lawless apocalypse, I could see 6:15 being a pretty big hit among genre fans. But what say you?
Source: Arrow in the Head
