Severed

Those of you who read “The Foreign Object” are probably familiar with the setup of a “triple threat match”. For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, its a wrestling match where three opponents compete against each other and only one can be the winner, and is also known as a “three way dance”. And it’s also the perfect analogy for this week’s review.

Lets review the cast of players in our triple threat movie. First, in the blue corner, accompanied by their manager “Faceless Corporate Empire”, wearing flannel and smelling of sweat and tree sap we have “The Lumberjacks”! Also, as a late entry into the Lumberjacks we have the son of the head of the Faceless Corporation, a Shane McMahan clone, if you will.
















As you can see in this photo taken from somewhere in either NorthWest America or Canada, Lumberjacks are often accompanied by Mounties and wild Scandanavian women.


Next up, in the Red corner, wearing the latest camping gear from LL Bean and some cheap hair beads, we have the forest protecting “Eco-Activists”.





In this highly realistic and believeable photo, you can see a hippie, er, Eco-Activist in his native environment... a web page.












Now before I introduce the 3rd entry in our rumble in the woods, I’d like to point out that while this movie sets us up to believe that there’s going to be a high amount of Left and Right sided political tension, there really isn’t. The writers were good about not taking sides between the Loggers and the Activists. The Loggers aren’t portrayed as beer chugging brutes, and the Activists aren’t depicted as crazy tree hugging hippies, although there is some chaining of people to trees. We’ll get into that later. No, the Loggers just want to do their job and the Activists want to protect the environment. Both sides are presented as “good people”.

Unfortunately, the chain of events that leads to the main point of this movie is set off by actions of both parties. You see, the Faceless Corporate Empire decided that it would be a good idea to test their new serum for genetically altering trees. The result is that the trees grow 3 times faster, increasing production, and possible ending clear-cut logging. A small side effect of playing God with the trees is that the trees now produce a thick, red sap that looks an awful lot like blood.

The Activists, not aware of this testing, decide to spike some trees. For those of you not familiar with the practice of spiking trees, its when you ram a railroad spike into a tree to break the chain on a chainsaw. There’s an article on Wikipedia about it here, but you don’t have to read it to realize that breaking the chain on a chainsaw will probably kill someone. In this case, it does… sort of.

So what does all this have to do with our third contender? Does a man-eating tree come to life and start devouring people? No, because the third contender in our triple threat movie is…

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ZOMBIES!!!


Yes, when the mutated tree sap is introduced into the human bloodstream, it makes the human transform into a flesh eating undead zombie. I guess this means that all weapons are legal in this three way dance. To top it all off, Faceless Corporate Empire has declared that this is a cage match, by blocking off all exits to the mountain and patrolling the roads with machine gun armed assault helicopters. Because you know that every faceless logging corporation on the planet has a fleet of machine gun armed assault helicopters with trained soldiers in case the trees get uppity and try to get away from the lumberjacks.

So all the political posturing goes out the window when the zombies come into play. They basically clear the area and run amok, eating lumberjacks and hippies equally. It should be noted that eating the hippies does not make the zombies mellow, and its hard to tell whether or not a zombie has the munchies, what with the already constant craving for human flesh.

The movie goes on with the generic rag-tag bunch of characters that you’ve probably seen in other zombie movies, performing tasks that you’ve probably also seen in other zombie movies. In fact, in the last 3rd of the movie, the survivors of the rag-tag generics make their way into a compound of lumberjacks who make sport of shooting zombies. Those of you who have seen 28 Days Later will notice the striking similarity between this part of the movie and the last part of 28 Days Later when the group comes upon the soldiers. The most notable aspect is the disproportionate number of men to women and the theme where killing zombies and enjoying it reduces a man’s civility as an example of man’s inhumanity to man.

Now, on that last note, I just want to say that killing zombies is not a game and not fun at all. I don’t know where anyone would get and idea like that. Let me spell it out for you, killing zombies should be done with respect, as these were someone’s loved ones, and should not under any circumstance be entertaining or fun.

Nor is it fun under any circumstance to watch a guy chained to a tree get eaten by zombies.

Never ever.

In conclusion, the victory in this triple threat movie goes undoubtedly and completely to the zombies. Neither the burly lumberjacks nor the college educated hippies were a match for the zombie horde. Especially since the zombie horde was comprised of fallen burly lumberjacks and fallen college educated hippies. No, everyone either gets eaten or killed by the Faceless Corporate Empire (the ending is slightly vague, but its implied that the last one left alive gets killed). And just like wrestling, you’re expected to have problems with long term memory. If you still remember this movie in two weeks, then there’s something wrong with you. Obviously you haven’t eaten enough hippies.