The Battery – Toronto After Dark 2013

The dark buddy road comedy The Battery follows, ex-baseball players, Ben (Jeremy Gardner, also the film’s writer/director) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) as they traverse the zombie-infested countryside.  The zombie apocalypse has been going on for many months and Ben and Mickey only have themselves for company, despite the fact that they barely knew each other prior to the zombie outbreak.  While Ben is all about killing zombies and moving along, Mickey has a huge desire to settle down somewhere and live a somewhat normal life.  This desire is increased when the two accidently intercept a communication from a nearby compound of survivors and Mickey and Ben’s different ways of dealing with the zombie apocalypse begins to reach its breaking point. While most zombie films take place towards the beginning of the outbreak, The Battery takes place after it has been going on for quite a while and there are very few living humans remaining.  The film treats zombies as just a “matter of fact” occurrence and Ben is shown casually killing them with his bat whenever they are encountered.  This disturbs Mickey, who longs for a normal life and is frequently shown ignoring the zombie outbreak by listening to music through his headphones.  It should be said here that The Battery has quite an impressive indie rock soundtrack, many of which are portrayed as songs Mickey is listening to.  In fact, one of the main highlights of the film has Ben lip syncing and dancing to the song “Anthem for the Already Defeated” by Toronto-based group Rock Plaza Central. Even though The Battery is not a traditional zombie film, I have to say that it really works as a whole.  The film is less of a horror film and much more about Ben and Mickey learning to co-exist with each other.  The film uses the existence of a mysterious compound of survivors to stir up the conflict between Ben and Mickey, with Ben wanting to find the compound and Mickey wanting him to just drop it.  There are also many great individual character moments in the film, the most enjoyable of which being Mickey’s encounter with a female zombie, which leaves him caught with his pants down (literally). The film takes an interesting change in direction during the final act, which helps to establish how, despite their different points of view, Ben and Mickey became quite close friends over the course of their adventure.  I also have to say that I was very impressed with the very haunting way the film ends, which helped to increase my overall opinion of the film. Overall, I have to say that The Battery was a great character study about two near-strangers trying to co-exist during the zombie apocalypse.  9 | REALLY LIKED IT