32 Days of Halloween V, Day 19: Stitched

There might be some of you wondering what’s up with Day 19, since normally we start it with the Chaneys, father or son. Well, the simple fact of the matter is: I couldn’t find a good short subject to address. So we’ll do something with them for tonight’s movie, fear not. However, if we switch gears here then I have a moment to tell you about this project by comic maniac Garth Ennis. It’s Stitched, out on DVD from Avatar Press.

You know Ennis. He brought you Preacher. A mad run on Hellblazer. A slew of Dredd. He is a truly disturbed individual, and for that we respect him greatly. But when I found out he was directing a film, I got excited. And when I found out it involved zombies, I got even more excited. You have to understand: I think the two-parter “Zombie Aquarium” story from Hitman might just be one of my favorite two-parters ever due to the sheer level of glee zombie penguins brought to my life. So you want to give this guy control of a camera and crew and give him zombies? Wicked. Let’s give it a whirl. Bring it.

[ad#shortpost]And Avatar kindly brought it. They threw me a copy of the DVD, bless em. This is a seventeen-minute short film that will go own to spawn a comic book next month. It’s also considered a “proof of concept” for a longer film. But what does it actually prove? It proves that Ennis has a great concept for a zombie movie and it managed to surprise me with the directions you could run with it. I don’t want to give away anything, because I found there was a really great “oh shit” moment in the film and an another good “ah-ha” moment. For the first, I’ll just give you this clue: don’t you hate it for the characters when they do what you know needs to be done in a situation, only to find out It Doesn’t Actually Work? Yeah. That. The less you know about the film, the more you’ll get jazzed. Trust me. (But the trailer’s not bad. Here it is, as promised.)

Direct link for the feedreaders.

If you’re excited about the prospect, the DVD will work for you, although admittedly the Act I setup is a bit frustrating. Just when it gets going and it seems like things are underway–and it feels like the production is getting comfortable and tightening up, it wraps up. Avatar–take it to Kickstarter or something! Seriously. You have gotten me intrigued enough to watch the rest of the phantom film. Now granted, the DVD would be admittedly lame if it only had seventeen minutes of a feature presentation. Nope. It has more special features than most full-on features. In addition to a decently sized behind-the-scenes featurette, the majority of the disc is a Garth Ennis spotlight docu (about an hour in length) that any hardcore Ennis fan will want to check out as it takes you through his entire story.

For info on the DVD, check here. And for more info about the project in general, check out the official site.