Rayting:
4.7/
10 2K votes
Language: English
Release date: July 19, 2013
A janitor gets trapped in a women's restroom and encounters an all out attack by a horde of zombies.
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User Reviews
Directed by Christian James and with a runtime of 84 minutes, this 2013 British zombie comedy horror film mostly takes place in the stall of a women's toilet cubicle - hence the name "Stalled". It is fair to say that this is toilet humour as it is written by and stars Dan Palmer, who goes by the name W.C. in the film (the name being the toilet humour part in case you though I was suggesting that Dan Palmer is $h1t).
At a Christmas party, things start going wrong. Partygoers are turning into flesh hungry zombies. Meanwhile a janitor, W.C. is stuck in the lady's bathroom and fighting for his life - or surviving at least anyway. There are a series of flashbacks which set the characters up, and there are some monologues to explain how feelings are being handled. There is a bit of gore as you would expect, but never too much to make the film a full-blown splatter horror film. Some of the comedy is ok, but there are a lot of cultural references which only relate to the time the film was made rather than being an all-spanning and encompassing reference point. W.C. is not entirely alone, as there is another person stuck in the room too, but she is a voice only and is never really seen. The addition of a second voice helps to make the film a little more than just one man's isolation in the situation which might have become tedious extremely fast.
Unashamedly a low budget film (£45k) with a nice concept, but it never really takes off fully and left me wanting something more to happen. I like that there was a confined element to the film and this helped the theme, but by the end of it the concept had worn down on me a little bit - the dialogue only entertained me for so long. I guess if you strip back something like "Night of the Living Dead" or "Shaun of the Dead" to a single room, with a single character, add some modern humour, this is what you get. Dan Palmer carries his creation on both shoulders and does not embarrass himself, but the film is as limited as location it uses. This is never going to be an all-time memorable zombie film, but it is a nice enough situational film which zombie fans will want to watch just for the sheer hell of it.
Fmovies: Okay, so, if you haven't got much of a budget and you want to make a picture, where do you set it? The answer: a toilet. I had to watch this film to believe it – an entire (zombie) film set inside a toilet (and, most importantly, a toilet cubicle). But, amazingly, they pulled it off – just.
At a Christmas party the dead rise (why... who cares!) and a janitor gets trapped in the women's toilets by a horde of flesh-eating ghouls. There he must sit and wait it out, or try to escape (or maybe both). Apart from the zombies (who don't really talk, as you can imagine), this is pretty much a one man show, as the janitor does what we might do in such a situation – which is pretty much nothing, as the circumstances don't really allow it.
And the janitor does a pretty good job of holding the film together. But he's not alone. There's someone else in the other cubicle, but we never really see her. All we get is her voice and they speak through the wood throughout the film. Unfortunately, I felt this 'mystery' character was the film's sticking point. I don't know why, but I never really believed there was anyone in the other stall. It was like she had recorded her lines in a separate studio and the production team were just playing them at the appropriate times.
There isn't that much gore (as the budget probably wouldn't allow it), but there is enough humour to keep most 'zom-com' fans would like (and even a few quite touching moments here and there). It's no Shaun of the Dead, but it's not a bad entry into the increasingly saturated zombie genre.
Entering a woman's bathroom facility, a janitor in a high-rise building enters a woman's bathroom for regular janitorial services only to get trapped inside when a zombie outbreak occurs and traps him inside, forcing him and another trapped co-worker to try to escape the situation.
This was a decent enough zombie comedy. Among it's best aspects here is the rather strong and enjoyable setup that immediately drops us into the main scenario. It's incredibly quick into this one that he becomes trapped inside the stall witnessing the attempted lesbians turn on each other when the zombie attacks the other one and keeps him inside. This results in the film exploring the possibility of its premise where he tries to find ways of getting out of the room where they get interrupted by the new zombies getting into the bathroom. The continuous influences to keep them out results in plenty of enjoyable and fun action here, from trying to sound an alarm to alert authorities to grabbing weapons from inside the room to use against them and finally the full-on action of the escape attempts to get out of the bathroom which are all due to the film's desire to keep the zombies as threats throughout which is greatly appreciated. That also leads to the film's comedic atmosphere and attitude. The fact that so much of this one is carried along through the hapless lead, focusing on the down-on-his-luck career guy with no prospects or positive outlook on life who keeps getting himself into deeper trouble creates plenty of laughs as his lack of smoothness or grace generates tons of fun. Mixing his lacking heroic qualities with genuine physical comedy, such as using severed fingers and a bra as a slingshot, continually using his reflection in a mirror on the other side of the room as a distraction to complete tasks or coming up with toilet paper as body armor to protect himself while wading through hordes of creatures offers up that fine combination of inverting his expected heroism with fine physical comedy as these come about due to needing to protect himself from previous screw-ups. On the whole, these here are what works here. This one does have some minor flaws here. The main flaw here is the absolutely flimsy and barely worthwhile storyline in keeping the film going as long as it does. There's very little at work here requiring this to be stretched out with the two figures in the single location as a feature-length film, requiring him to be completely inept at everything to further the story. None of that is realistic or believable, causing the film to get to a respectable running time by utilizing its secondary flaw in mind-numbing conversations between them. Zooming into a sketch on the wall for her face instead of switching to being in her stall serves to highlight the twist from the very start, and as none of it's hounding or him or dirty stories all that funny making it appear as padding to stretch its premise out. These are pretty much the only areas holding this down.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity.
Stalled fmovies. I enjoy all things zombie, and check out just about everything I can come across. Now, the title of this movie, the concept of the story and the fact that it brandished "a worthy successor to Shaun of the Dead" on the front cover really had my interest peaked.
So, of course I had to give it a go. And the verdict is, well, the story has its moments, and it is one of those particular movies that is thick with British comedy. A worthy successor to "Shaun of the Dead", however, nah, I wouldn't go that far.
The story is in all its simplicity about W.C. (played by Dan Palmer), a janitor who gets trapped in a women's bathroom stall when a Christmas party takes a turn for the worse and people start turning into ravenous flesh-eating zombies.
I will say that director Christian James did have an interest approach to this movie, especially since about 95% of all the movie just takes place in a confined, cramped stall in a ladies restroom. That being said, then that limitation of location also set a heavy limitation on the movie, because it was starting to wear a bit thin towards the end.
The acting in the movie was alright, especially since the entire movie was just riding on the performance of Dan Palmer and the voice of Antonia Bernath - from two stalls over.
"Stalled" is in itself a good enough zombie movie, that should be watched at least once, if you enjoy zombie movies, as I do. However, it is not outstanding, nor is it as great as initially hyped up to be. The movie is fairly generic, and while it is not amongst the worst of zombies movies I have seen, nor can I claim that it is amongst the better of such movies.
In British comedy/horror Stalled, a janitor (Dan Palmer) finds himself trapped in a ladies toilet cubicle during a zombie outbreak; unfortunately, this fairly neat concept is flushed away by a lousy script that fails to deliver either the laughs or scares, while wooden performances push any potential even further round the U-bend.
The film takes place on Christmas Eve as W.C.—as the janitor is appropriately named—prepares to leave his job for good, having helped himself to the charity money raised by office employees during their seasonal work do. However, before W.C. can abscond with the cash, the living dead block his way, forcing him to reconsider his plans.
After a while, W.C. becomes aware of another survivor, a woman, also trapped in one of the cubicles; what follows is lots of desperately unfunny dialogue between the two, the nadir of which is a 'charming' tale of incest, interspersed with uninspired zombie action (which at least provides some cheapo splat-stick gore, I suppose).
A janitor (Dan Palmer) gets trapped in a women's restroom and encounters an all-out attack by a horde of zombies.
Clearly the people who made this have talent, had an idea, had a good cast and crew and had a sense of humor. But it just never really took off. There are some scenes that are pretty awesome, but the vast bulk of the time is drawn out (I could not care less about the relationship between WC and the girl in the other stall).
Unfortunately, another issue was the strong British accents. I cannot hold this against them -- or at least I should not -- but many of the talking parts were completely lost on me. These were some thick accents.