The Battery (2012)

(On Cable TV, March 2016) It takes a while to appreciate the no-budget aesthetics of The Battery, with its static camera, long takes, limited characters and meandering plot, but it works relatively well for a film reportedly shot for $6000 with a skeleton crew. The setup isn’t much more than the usual zombie movie setup, as our two protagonists travel through the empty rural areas of New England and figure out what to do after the apocalypse. The zombie menace is never far away, and finding other human survivors isn’t necessarily good news. While the first half-hour seemingly goes nowhere, The Battery eventually snaps into focus, leading to a tense and (occasionally) hilarious siege scenario that consumes much of the last minutes of the film. Writer/Director Jeremy Gardner also stars and turns in an impressive first feature: while the result doesn’t have the polish of bigger-budgeted productions, The Battery understands its limitations and works with them.