Considering that these guys put “Winner of 5 Academy awards including best picture” in their more info section, I’m not exactly walking into this one with the best of intentions.  In fact, just seeing that little bit of snidery made me dubious for the whole experience.

But would they turn it around?  Let’s take a look.

Phase 6 revolves around that favorite impetus of so many films, short or otherwise, the Zombie Apocalypse.  We don’t really know why the dead have risen to life and are attacking the living, nor do we really need to.  All we need to know is that, for our Phase 6 family, the end of the world is here.  Will they survive?  Stay tuned.

Phase 6 is a surprisingly well executed film that watches like large portions of it are missing.  The short will ask you to glibly accept things that happen, whether or not they have any clear reason for doing so.  Zombies will pound on a front door one moment, only to have managed to find the back door, enter it, and walk through the house in the time it took the house’s occupants to answer the front door.  Taking your eyes off a child in an empty field for nine full seconds is just asking for trouble, and I don’t know where the zombie came from that broke into that car window.  Seriously, they stop by the side of the road, two seconds later a zombie punches through the window, despite the fact we’d been shown the car driving down a totally empty road.  Where did this zombie come from?  Had it been running alongside the car the whole time and we just didn’t know?

That’s most of the problem with Phase 6, even though it’s actually well executed and will have blood to spare, they just didn’t pay very close attention to their pacing.  Or their continuity–that door was standing open when they left the house.  Or to their sound engineering, either–word of warning, crank the speakers even if all your systems are on max volume otherwise you can’t hear this thing AT ALL.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this mangled wreck of a terrific movie a five out of ten for doing a great job in some parts and badly bungling others.